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.
Bold climate action deserves bold philanthropy. Since the launch of the Climate Breakthrough Award program, we have provided or committed multimillion-dollar funding and a suite of tailored support to 26 individuals and two teams of Awardees.
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. Our work isn’t just about who and what we support—it’s also about how we support. We have evidence our Climate Breakthrough Award program fosters a rare environment for leaders to pursue strategies—especially emerging or underexplored ones—as innovative and incisive as the problem demands. Let’s bet big; let’s break through.
Engage with Us
Contact us for information on how to become a funding partner, support our selection process, and join our robust learning community.
