Reflections on UNGA 2025: Convening with Courage and Care

This year’s United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) met us at a crossroads. Around the world, crises stack up like dominoes — climate, health, hunger, conflict — yet so do the possibilities for what we can build together when the right people are in the right room.

For The Rockefeller Foundation, UNGA has always been about more than speeches and panels. It’s about creating spaces where power and imagination can meet, where the people carrying the weight of the world’s challenges can look each other in the eye and start charting the path forward.

The Inaugural Global Dialogue: A Table Where Everyone Has a Voice

On September 22, 2025, we hosted the Inaugural Global Dialogue: Building the Shared Future (BtSF) at our New York headquarters. This convening was designed with a simple belief: how we gather shapes what’s possible.

We brought together 18 leaders from across government, business, philanthropy, and civil society — seated as equals around a single roundtable, surrounded by a curated audience, with 360-degree cameras capturing every voice and every angle. No podiums. No hierarchy. Just a room designed for candor, courage, and collaboration. The day began with Dr. Rajiv Shah, President of The Rockefeller Foundation, calling us to meet the moment with imagination and urgency. Prime Minister Mia Mottley of Barbados followed, bringing a clear and compelling vision for leadership at a critical moment

With Roz Brewer moderating, the conversation moved with intention — leaders exchanging perspectives and collaborating to confront 21st century challenges with new, creative solutions.

More Than a Meeting

At The Rockefeller Foundation, we see convenings as a core part of the work — not as afterthoughts. When done well, they:

Surface the big ideas that might otherwise stay siloed.

Build the alliances and commitments that carry those ideas forward.

Create the trust and relationships that make lasting impact possible.

This inaugural Global Dialogue showed what happens when we design a space for both imagination and action — when we invite people not just to talk, but to dream and to build.

But this conversation was never meant to stand alone. It was the thread that wove through The Rockefeller Foundation’s wider UNGA presence — from accelerating Mission 300 with global energy leaders, to advancing regenerative school meals in climate and development agendas, to deepening health and resilience work on the road to COP30. Each dialogue, each announcement, each thought leadership opportunity, whether around catalytic finance, city-level climate innovation, or diaspora philanthropy, echoed the same core conviction that animated the Global Dialogue; bold cooperation across boundaries is the only way to meet today’s converging crises. In this sense, Build the Shared Future served as both a launchpad and a unifier — setting the tone for how every other UNGA convening at The Rockefeller Foundation pushed forward concrete alliances and commitments toward a more equitable future.

The Work Ahead

Last week was only the beginning. The conversations started throughout New York City will continue long after UNGA. In particular, for Build the Shared Future, this convening is the first in a series of dialogues that will keep gathering leaders with intention — to wrestle with hard truths, share bold ideas, and chart the path toward a shared future.

Because the way we gather is the way we begin.