Welcome to Bellagio Breakthroughs, where we highlight the work of Bellagio Center residents and conveners who are driving progress on globally pressing issues. In these pages, we invite you to learn more about how these leaders and their work at The Bellagio Center are helping to move the needle on the most important issues of our time.
Latest Story
What Gets Measured Gets Managed: Dr. Anna Herforth on Improving Diets Through Data
Diet-linked diseases cause 1 in 5 deaths and cost trillions of dollars. But how can we change this without knowing what people eat? Dr. Anna Herforth of the Global Diet Quality Project talks about how researchers, advocates and UN agencies came together at the Bellagio Center to help make diet quality a part of the Sustainable Development Goals and introduce new tools for fighting hunger malnutrition.
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Previous Breakthroughs
Start at the Tension Point: John de la Parra and Julian Portilla on Building Relationships and Trust 
Genetic data from plants is used to make many blockbuster medicines and products. How can the indigenous peoples who steward them share the benefits? The Rockefeller Foundation’s John de la Parra and Julian Portilla from the Meridian Institute talk about how an unlikely partnership of industry, researchers, indigenous and local communities and others helped to shift international policy and unlock a significant, sustainable funding source to protect the environment and support indigenous peoples. 
Mapping the Invisible: Priyamvada Natarajan on Changing How We See the Universe
2025 Dannie Heineman Prize for Astrophyisics Winner Dr. Priamvada Natarajan discusses her career focused on of illuminating the invisible, from dark matter to supermassive black holes at the dawn of the cosmos, and what it feels like to take an idea from radical speculation to scientific acceptance. 
Stories That Remain: George Fatheree on Changing Narratives and Fighting Black Land Loss
Throughout U.S. history, Black families have had their land seized, losing a critical tool for building generational wealth. George Fatheree talks about his work to preserve their stories and why truth is necessary to achieve justice. 
Building a North Star: Mathieu Poirier on Global Action to Fight Antimicrobial Resistance
Antimicrobial resistance kills more than a million people every year. Dr. Mathieu Poirier talks about forging global consensus to fight this global threat. 
Governing the Just Transition: Maja de Vibe and Mark Robinson on Preventing Corruption in a Renewable Future
Corruption and governance in the renewable sector threaten the promise of a just transition to clean power, yet few measures are in place to prevent them. In 2024 Mark Robinson and Maja de Vibe embarked on a Bellagio Center residency to explore the governance risks endangering a just transition. Their new paper provides concrete steps on how the sector can fight potential corruption through industry-led collective action. 
The Power of Convening
True breakthroughs don’t happen in isolation. When people come together united by a common purpose, share their diverse perspectives, forge joint solutions, and combine their resources, the world can change. In this issue, we share perspectives on four Bellagio Center convenings that led to transformative change in health, food, financing, and power systems, creating impact that reverberates to this day. 
Gender Equality
Women are agents of change. In this edition of Bellagio Perspectives, we interview ten women leaders in economics, government, arts, media, philanthropy, development, & law who use gender as a primary lens in their efforts to eliminate inequities and unlock solutions for the most pressing issues of our time, from climate change to human rights and political empowerment. 
Climate Change
The world is contending with a climate emergency that threatens to impact lives and livelihoods across the globe, leaving no one unscathed. These impacts will be complex and interrelated, affecting access to food and nutrition, through increased likelihood of crop failures, and negatively impacting health, through increased heat stress as well as the rise of vector-borne diseases. These impacts will also demand new approaches to financing and governance to ensure that resources are available when and where they are most needed. Bellagio Bulletin
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