President & CEO Column
During 2024 the Institute of the Americas (IOA) has much to be grateful for and celebrate with steady progress made towards furthering our mission through work across our energy, environment & climate change and economic competitiveness programmatic pillars. IOA’s accomplishments over the past year are highlighted in our recently issued 2024 annual report, which I encourage you to read.
Over the past year, IOA organized 13 convenings bringing together over 800 multi-stakeholder actors from the private, public, civil society, and academic participating in Argentina, Brazil and Mexico, as well as our annual energy conferences in La Jolla and Madrid. Another key highlight was the organization of our first annual sustainable shipping forum in La Paz, BCS which resulted in a partnership between IOA, CAMEINTRAM and World Wildlife Fund Mexico that led to launching Mexico’s Champions for Sustainable Shipping initiative now working to catalyze expanded decarbonization initiatives for the country’s shipping and ports sectors.
IOA also convened our first Western Hemispheric Dialogue on Climate Adaptation in Sao Paulo, Brazil with twelve municipalities from across Latin America & the Caribbean in support of the U.S. State Department’s Cities Forward Initiative working in collaboration with our partners, ICELI and Resilient Cities Catalyst.
IOA continued its thought leadership by publishing 14 issue papers and research publications authored or co-authored by IOA team members this past year on issues ranging from the Guyana-Venezuela border crisis to the role of natural gas to accelerate decarbonization in Latin America & the Caribbean in addition to a review on how biodiversity can become integrated into ESG. We also co-published two policy issue papers focused on nearshoring opportunities in the Cali-Baja region in collaboration with the Burnham Center for Community Advancement.
Our regional leadership in fostering on-going North American economic integration continues with our support of the North American Forum (NAF) and our plans to host the NAF’s 2025 meeting in La Jolla.
To help spur expanded investment for climate tech startups in Latin America & the Caribbean, IOA has also recently teamed up with San Francisco-based Good Machine and Florianopolis, Brazil-based Founders Haus in support of the U.S. State Department’s Coalition for Climate Entrepreneurship (CCE).
This past year the Institute celebrated and recognized Jorge Rosenblut for his six years of service as our Board Chair and welcomed Javade Chaudhri as our new Board Chair with a three-year term.
Our work would not be possible without the on-going support of donors and friends like you. Accordingly, as 2024 comes to an end, I want to encourage you to make a year-end gift in support of the Institute of the Americas. Your gift would mean a lot!
Thank you for all that you do to help further the Institute of the Americas’ mission.
Happy Holidays,
Richard Kiy
President & CEO