Christiana Figueres
founding partner, Global Optimism
Christiana Figueres is a Costa Rican citizen and an internationally recognized leader on climate change. She was Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) from 2010 to 2016.
During her tenure at the UNFCCC, Ms. Figueres brought together national and sub-national governments, corporations and activists, financial institutions and NGOs to jointly deliver the historic Paris Agreement on climate change, in which 195 sovereign nations agreed on a collaborative path forward to limit future global warming to well below 2°C, and strive for 1.5°C, in order to protect the most vulnerable. For this achievement, Ms. Figueres has been credited with forging a new brand of collaborative diplomacy and has received multiple awards, including the 2023 RSA Albert Medal.
Since then, Ms. Figueres has continued to accelerate the global response to climate change. Today, she is the co-founder of Global Optimism, co-host of the podcast Outrage + Optimism and is the co-author of “The Future We Choose: The Stubborn Optimists' Guide to the Climate Crisis.
Twitter: @CFigueres