Big Bets Fellowship: Asia-Pacific/

Meet the 2024 Big Bets Climate Fellows

In its inaugural year, 16 leaders from Brazil, Colombia, Panama, Puerto Rico, and the United States were selected to advance solutions intended to reverse the climate crisis and accelerate opportunity across Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), with a focus on the Amazon Basin. The Big Bets Climate Fellowship, which was established as part of The Rockefeller Foundation’s billion-dollar climate strategy, will provide fellows with programming, networking, and professional development opportunities as they work to implement their bold climate solutions effectively and at scale.

Meet the 2024 Big Bets Climate Fellows and read more about their project’s big bet and their intended benefitting regions, below:

Meet the Fellows

Xiomara Acevedo
Bring thousands of women to global and local government discussions to improve climate policies.
Founder and Director, Barranquilla +20
Marcela Angel
Prevent landslide deaths through data prediction and community action.
Research Program Director, MIT
Lina Ascencio
Ensure continental renewable energy developments center indigenous input.
Project Coordinator, Yanama Origen y Palabra
Luisa Fernanda Bacca
Center Amazonian indigenous experiences in the development of climate governance systems.
Advocacy Advisor, GAIA
Erika Berenguer
Fireproof the Amazon in 25 years to avoid the forest collapse.
Senior Research Associate, Oxford University
Mariolga Reyes Cruz
Show the Caribbean what is possible in regenerative farming through accessible land tenure.
Co-founder and Exec Director, FiTiCAS Agroecology Commons
Avriel Díaz
Save lives by predicting the spread of climate-sensitive diseases and securing budgets for adaptation.
President and Co-Founder, Walking Palms Global Health
Reinhold Gallmetzer
Use data technology, and law to prevent deforestation and protect people.
Founder and Chair, Climate Crime Analysis
Carlos Magno
Ensure water rights for equitable adaptation as land gets drier.
Veterinarian, Plataforma Semiaridos
Elena Martínez
Prevent biodiversity and livelihood adaptation challenges by harvesting harmful sargassum nearshore.
R&D Director, SOS Carbon
Daniela Orofino
Legally turn 57 million hectares of Brazil’s undesignated public lands into indigenous territories, national parks and conservation units.
Executive Director, Amazonia de Pe’
Valmir Ortega
Scale regenerative agriculture by training farmers and securing buyers of crops.
CEO, Belterra
Rodrigo Pacheco
Create the world’s largest Biodiverse Edible Forest to protect nature, ancestral knowledge and create economic opportunity for local communities to put biodiversity on the plate.
Executive Director and Chef, Bocavaldivia
Ricardo Politi
Increase the economic competitiveness of forests to outcompete the deforestation economy, while promoting community wellbeing and fair benefits sharing.
External Relations Officer, Brazil President, Amazon Investor Coalition
Fabiano Thompson
Build the world's first Great Amazon Reef biodiversity map to set a foundation for the development of a marine bioeconomy.
Professor and PhD, Thompson Lab
Felipe Villela
Nature Equity, a new asset class, that brings nature onto the balance sheet.
Head of LATAM, The Landbanking Group

The 2024 fellowship, which runs from June to November, has a specific focus on the LAC region, where The Rockefeller Foundation has invested for more than 100 years. According to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC), the LAC region has experienced extreme weather including mega-drought, extreme rainfall, heatwaves, rising sea levels, and deforestation. In response, the fellows will work on a range of unique solutions to address the region’s climate challenges, prioritizing undeserved communities who face disproportionately heightened risks from climate change.

The program will bring the fellows together in Sao Paulo, Brazil; at The Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center in Bellagio, Italy; and its New York City headquarters during the Climate Week NYC 2024. These key touchpoints will offer opportunities for intensive collaboration, skill-building, and networking, to help advance fellows’ bold climate solutions. The fellowship is structured around a custom curriculum designed by IDEO, the design firm known for its work on The Earthshot Prize.

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