Meet our 2026 Cohort

Caribbean

  • Marsha Caddle is the Minister of Economic Affairs and Planning of Barbados, now in her third term as an elected MP. An economist and public policy strategist, she was one of the authors of the 2018 Barbados Economic Recovery and Transformation Plan, which restored foreign reserves eightfold and saw debt and arrears fall by a third. She served as Barbados's climate finance negotiator for the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) at the COP summits, and led the first reform of the country's physical planning and land use policy in 50 years. As Barbados's Minister of Industry, Innovation, Science and Technology, she established the country's cybersecurity capacity and launched a programme to bring AI and technology training and computing capacity to a new generation of technologists. She has led the Governance practice at the Caribbean Development Bank, the Poverty Reduction Program at UNDP, and the Economic Security and Rights Program of UNIFEM Caribbean. Her work has spanned over thirty countries, with a focus on climate finance, equality, and economic justice.

  • Alexa Lightbourne is the Minister of Home Affairs for the Government of Bermuda, appointed following her election win in the 2025 General Election. Prior to becoming Minister, she served as Head of Operations and Strategy and Chief of Staff to the Premier of Bermuda. Her political work began on the ground as a field organizer in Florida on Barack Obama's 2012 re-election campaign, rooting her in the direct, listening-first work of connecting with voters one conversation at a time. She brought that approach into the wider region, contributing to successful general election campaigns in Antigua, St. Kitts and Nevis, and Grenada, before serving as Campaign Manager for the Progressive Labour Party's 2017 and 2020 general elections. She holds an LL.B. from the University of Westminster and a degree in Politics and International Relations from Queen Mary, University of London. Her vision focuses on innovation, sustainability, and fostering inclusive growth for Bermuda.

  • Dominique Dupuy is a former Minister of Foreign Affairs and Worship of Haiti and former Minister for Haitians Living Abroad, having become Haiti's Minister of Foreign Affairs at 34. She served as Ambassador and Permanent Delegate to UNESCO and non-resident Representative to the African Union. At UNESCO, she became the first Haitian elected Vice-President of the Executive Board, and worked to secure international recognition for Haiti's cultural heritage. Her career has included high-level engagements with heads of state and government across the Caribbean, Americas, Africa, and Europe. Fluent in French, English, Spanish, and Haitian Creole, her work emphasizes youth and women's empowerment, human rights, and linguistic equity.

    She is currently engaged in international advisory work, with a focus on South-South cooperation. She is the mother of a seven-year-old daughter.

  • Gabriela Morris is a former Senator of Jamaica and current President of her party's youth arm, where she leads national efforts to mobilize and empower young people within the political process. She was appointed to the Senate in 2020 at 23, the youngest senator in Jamaican history, and in the Senate she worked on education, digital access, and social equity for underserved communities. She previously served as Spokesperson on Youth and Civic Engagement, advancing initiatives to strengthen participation, access, and opportunity across Jamaica. She holds a degree in Pharmacology and a Master's in Communication for Social and Behavior Change from the University of the West Indies, Mona, and is an alumna of McGill University's Parliamentary Governance Program, and in 2024 was selected for the EU Visitors Programme in Brussels and Strasbourg. Her work is grounded in expanding democratic participation and pathways for young people to engage meaningfully in national development.

Europe

  • Delara Burkhardt is a German-Iranian politician and a Member of the European Parliament representing the Social Democratic Party of Germany.

    Elected in 2019 at the age of 26, she became the youngest German Member of the European Parliament. She serves on the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety, working on climate policy, biodiversity protection, and sustainable supply chains. She has been particularly active in strengthening European legislation to prevent deforestation linked to global trade and promoting corporate accountability in environmental and human rights standards. She studied social sciences at Kiel University and completed a Master's in socioeconomics at the University of Hamburg.

    Beyond her environmental work, she advocates for migration reform, anti-racism, gender equality, and LGBTQ+ rights.

  • Annalisa Corrado is a Member of the European Parliament, elected in 2024, sitting on the Environment Committee and Industry and Energy Committee. She also serves on the Bureau of the Democratic Party, responsible for Ecological Transition, Climate, Green Economy, and Agenda 2030, and she sits on the Parliament's delegation for relations with Palestine. She holds a degree in mechanical engineering and a PhD in energy from the University of Rome La Sapienza, focused on the analysis of the environmental impact of energy systems. She began her career in life cycle assessment consulting at the Ministry of the Environment, private companies, and NGOs. She is the author of several books on environmentalism, including Le ragazze salveranno il mondo (2020), which profiles women who shaped the environmental movement. She has represented the European Parliament at COP29 and COP30, participated in the "Global Sumud Flotilla" Humanitarian Mission to Gaza in 2025, served as Chief Observer of the EU Electoral Observation Mission in Peru (2026) and headed the EU delegation in Bolivia (2025).

  • Leire Pajín is a Member of the European Parliament and former Minister of Health, Social Policy and Equality of Spain from 2010 to 2011. A sociologist and politician, she had earlier been one of the PSOE's most senior figures, serving as Secretary of Organization and, from the age of 28, Secretary of State for International Cooperation, before becoming a minister. She has held senior roles as Director of International Development at the Institute of Global Health (IS Global), President of the Spanish Network for Sustainable Development (REDS-SDSN Spain), President of the European Union and Latin America and Caribbean Foundation, and adviser at the Pan American Health Organization/World Health Organization (PAHO/WHO). She returned to frontline politics in 2024, after twelve years away, elected to the European Parliament on the PSOE list headed by Teresa Ribera. Her career spans the intersection of health, equality, and international development across Europe and Latin America, with a consistent focus on building policy that connects regional institutions with global frameworks.

  • Katie White is the Minister for Climate in the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero and a Member of Parliament for Leeds North West, elected in 2024 and appointed to the department the following year. She is responsible for shaping the UK's transition to clean energy and delivering the government's climate ambitions at home and internationally. Before entering Parliament, she co-led the campaign for the Climate Change Act, one of the world's first legally binding frameworks for reducing emissions, and went on to hold senior roles across government and the environmental sector. She helped prepare the UK's contribution to the Copenhagen climate summit, served at the Department of Energy and Climate Change, and was Executive Director at WWF-UK. She was awarded an Order of the British Empire for services to tackling climate change in 2013. She brings more than two decades of experience driving climate action across government, business, politics, and civil society.

Latin America

  • Maria Migliore is a former Minister of Human Development and Habitat of the City of Buenos Aires, serving from 2019 to 2023, where she led a socio-urban integration strategy across the city's most vulnerable neighborhoods, reaching more than 150,000 people through infrastructure investment and participatory methods. As General Manager of the City's Housing Institute, she oversaw urban integration across five informal settlements. A public policy expert with over fifteen years of experience in urban governance and social development, she currently leads the socio-productive integration area at Fundar, an Argentinian think tank dedicated to public policy innovation, advises the Inter-American Development Bank and Development Bank of Latin America on urban integration projects, and writes a weekly column at Infobae, one of Latin America's largest digital news outlets. She co-founded Popurrí, a political startup built on the premise that Argentina's political system is broken in how it represents, governs, and connects with people, pairing community encounters with digital organizing to use technology, in her words, "without losing the human encounter at the center."

  • Priscilla Vindas is a former Member of Parliament of Costa Rica from 2022 to 2026. A Frente Amplio legislator, she was the youngest of the twenty-seven women in the Assembly when she took her seat in 2022, at 28. She holds a degree in Political Science from the University of Costa Rica and has been active in community efforts to defend protected zones and water resources in her home canton of Naranjo. Her environmental work centers on defending the El Chayote Protected Zone and the canton's water supply. Her legislative work spanned social policy, environmental issues, gender, and security, with a focus on human rights and vulnerable populations. She remains engaged in public policy, governance, and social impact.

  • Irma Hernandez is the Mayor of San Miguelito and the youngest mayor in Panama. Elected in 2024 through a free nomination, she became the most voted mayoral candidate in the district's history. A lawyer specializing in local governance, she managed youth programs at the municipality she now leads in 2016, and served as Chief of Staff to Juan Diego Vasquez, member of parliament, from 2019 to 2022. She won the National Oratory Contest in 2013. A feminist and municipalist, she is committed to transparency, community participation, and improving quality of life through sustainable urban transformation.

  • Valeria Csukasi Cabrera has served as Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Uruguay since March 2025. A seasoned career diplomat who served for more than two decades in the foreign service, she has built a reputation as a leading expert in international trade and integration. She has previously served as Uruguay's Ambassador to Malaysia (2022 to 2025), Director General of Integration and MERCOSUR, and Chair of the WTO Committee on Agriculture in Geneva. Her academic background includes an international relations degree from the Universidad de la República and a master's in Gender and Comprehensive Public Policies from FLACSO Uruguay. Within the ministry she has championed gender equity in the foreign service, advancing parity on diplomatic evaluation boards and stronger protections for women diplomats.

North America

  • Niki Sharma is the Deputy Premier and Attorney General of British Columbia, Canada. A lawyer by training, her practice prior to elected office focused on representing Indigenous people, including residential school survivors. As Attorney General, she has led many reforms to build a more equitable justice system, including strengthening protections from online harms, a record investment in family law legal aid, combatting racism, and helping implement an Indigenous justice strategy. Through her work in public interest litigation, she has held multinational corporations, including tobacco and opioid manufacturers, accountable for harming people. She is currently leading reforms to address systemic issues in responding to gender-based violence.

Past fellows: 2024, 2025