Highlights from Big Bets Live 2025
Watch the panels below to see the bold ideas and global collaborations that took center stage at Big Bets Live 2025. From unlocking energy access to reimagining food as medicine, these dynamic conversations offer an inside look at how The Rockefeller Foundation and its partners are driving real-world impact across the globe.
Raj Shah on Bold Vision and Urgent Action
This session highlighted The Rockefeller Foundation’s enduring legacy – more than a century of investing in ideas and people – and explored how the ethos of Big Bets has shaped RF’s bold priorities and programs.
Speaker: Raj Shah, President, The Rockefeller Foundation
Scaling Energy Access in Africa
This session explored how The Rockefeller Foundation’s Big Bet on energy is accelerating access across Africa through the Universal Energy Facility and innovative partnerships bringing renewable power to off-grid communities.
Moderated by: Manoush Zomorodi, Host of NPR’s TED Radio Hour and 2025 Bellagio Resident
Speakers: Agnes Dasewicz, Chief Investment Officer, the Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet (GEAPP) and Anita Otubu, Senior Director, Universal Energy Facility (UEF), SEforALL
Serving Those Who Served Through Food and Dignity
This session explored how The Rockefeller Foundation’s Food is Medicine Big Bet is improving health for U.S. veterans through a VA partnership, including pilots in three states and a produce stipend program for 1,000 veterans in Durham.
Moderated by: Manoush Zomorodi, Host of NPR’s TED Radio Hour and 2025 Bellagio Resident
Speakers: Peter Skillern, CEO, Reinvestment Partners and Connor Drake, Assistant Professor, Duke University School of Medicine
A Pandemic Partnership Retrospective
This session reflected on the Foundation’s early and bold investment at the onset of the pandemic. Admiral Brett P. Giroir shared leadership insights from orchestrating national testing strategies that helped provide affordable, rapid diagnostic tests and kept schools and communities safe.
Moderated by: Andrew Sweet, Vice President, Innovation, The Rockefeller Foundation
Speaker: Admiral Brett P. Giroir, MD, Former U.S. Assistant Secretary for Health
The Rockefeller Foundation’s Vision in Action
Liz Yee, EVP of Programs, reflected on the day’s stories, highlighting the Foundation’s global reach, diverse themes, and partnership approach, and launched the Big Bets Fellows Asia cohort, inviting collaboration to shape the Foundation’s future.
Speaker: Liz Yee, Executive Vice President of Programs
When Farmers Meet AI
Highlighting Farmer.Chat, an AI tool by Digital Green and OpenAI, this session showed how timely advice and new partnerships are scaling regenerative farming in India with support from The Rockefeller Foundation.
Moderated by: Manoush Zomorodi, Host of NPR’s TED Radio Hour and 2025 Bellagio Resident
Speakers: Nidhi Bhasin, CEO, Digital Green Trust and Anna Makanju, VP of Global Impact, OpenAI
Protecting Lives in a Warming World
This session explored how The Rockefeller Foundation’s climate-health Big Bet partnered with Rio’s Health Department and C40 Cities to use climate data in developing heat response plans and public health protections after the 2023 heat wave.
Moderated by: Manoush Zomorodi, Host of NPR’s TED Radio Hour and 2025 Bellagio Resident
Speakers: Gislani Mateus, Superintendent of Health Surveillance, Rio de Janeiro and Amanda Ikert, Head of Adaptation Initiative, C40 Cities
Leading Through Innovation, Rooted in Community
Amina Doherty of the Clara Lionel Foundation and The Rockefeller Foundation convened for a conversation on how trust-based, community-led philanthropy is driving climate resilience and building a more just, creative, and resilient future.
Moderated by: Natalye Paquin, Chief Operating Officer, The Rockefeller Foundation
Speaker: Amina Doherty, Head of Programs and Impact, Clara Lionel Foundation
Learn more about Big Bets
- At The Rockefeller Foundation, we believe you can make the world better with big bets. That's why we're building a community that brings together emerging leaders with bold solutions for reversing climate change, and empowering them to turn those ideas into reality.
- The Big Bets Fellowship is a four-month leadership program for emerging leaders at a pivotal moment, designed to accelerate bold action on the world’s toughest challenges — now expanding in 2025 to cohorts in the Asia-Pacific and the United States.
- For over 112 years, The Rockefeller Foundation has pursued bold, long-term solutions to global challenges — what began as “scientific philanthropy” is now known as big bets, with over $26 billion invested to improve lives around the world.
