OUR Program
For the past decade, Climate Breakthrough has pursued a single mission to catalyze transformational, not incremental, climate action to swiftly and justly close the gap between the world today and a sustainable future. That means backing visionary strategists to develop, launch, and scale ideas with the potential to reduce global annual emissions by hundreds of millions of tons, affect entire industries or regions of the world, and materially change the lives of millions of people.
2025 COHORT
Meet the 2025 cohort of the Climate Breakthrough Award program. Each is embarking on their most ambitious initiative to create breakthroughs in systems critical to resolving the climate crisis.
- Alessandra Orofino: to scale cultural change and galvanize public commitment across Brazil to protecting the Amazon
- Gavin McCormick: to revolutionize the process carbon accounting rules use to evaluate impact, ensuring that governments and private sector actors make decisions that decrease emissions in reality, not just on paper
- Liming Qiao: to tackle the emerging big bottleneck in the transition to renewable energy, which is grid flexibility and energy storage in Southeast Asia
- Ramón Méndez Galain: to help emerging economies redesign their electricity systems for a renewable future, drawing on the experience and problem-solving strategies he developed through his leadership of Uruguay’s energy transition
- Team of Giuliana Furci, Merlin Sheldrake, and Toby Kiers: to lay the legal, regulatory, and scientific groundwork to write fungi—currently a massive blind spot in the climate movement—into global climate and conversation agendas
OUR Legacy
Since 2016, we have championed some of the world’s most capable strategists to swiftly and justly close the gap between the world today and a sustainable future. In celebration of the 10th anniversary of the Climate Breakthrough Award program, we’re proud to share a film featuring 19 inspiring Climate Breakthrough Awardees and what drives them.
Problem solvers and social innovators, scientists and storytellers, community builders and systems movers, all showing up day after day to do the hard work of building a new world through climate action. They speak about despair and hope. About community and courage. About the moments that broke them and the ones that rebuilt them. And through it all, they return to one truth: climate action does not belong to any one profession, identity, or pathway. It belongs to all of us, exactly as we are. This film is a tribute to everyone who shows up for this work, in any way you can.
Engage with Us
Contact us for information on how to become a funding partner, support our selection process, and join our robust learning community.
