2010 Tutu Fellow Bright Simons has been selected for a month-long residency by the Rockefeller Foundation at the Bellagio Center in Italy. The first group of 2024 residents selected was announced in March.
Since launching in 1959, the Bellagio residency program has welcomed more than 4,000 artists, policymakers, scholars, authors, practitioners, and scientists from 130 countries, including 100 recognized as Nobel Laureates. Each year, the Bellagio Center residency program offers around 100 individuals the opportunity to develop the ideas, art, policies, and breakthroughs that will help to promote the well-being of humanity by making opportunity universal and sustainable.
He'll be rubbing shoulders with global leaders from various fields and nations all over the world. Among them is Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz (United States), scientist Solomon Assefa (Ethiopia), global health expert Alaa Murabit (Libya), renowned dancer and choreographer Bijayini Satpathy (India), and novelist Gioconda Belli (Nicaragua).
The Foundation selected the cohort in several categories - Climate Solutions; Well-being; Reinventing Capitalism; Health, Equity, Innovative Finance, and AI; and Cross-cutting themes, including gender; human rights; culture and representation; and leadership, law, and policy.
Bright was selected for the Reinventing Capitalism group. He's the President of mPedigree, a social enterprise working on three continents in partnership with governments, several of the Fortune 500 companies and grassroots organizations to spread innovative technologies that secure communities from the harmful effects of counterfeiting, especially in such sensitive sectors like health, agriculture, cosmetics and automotive.
The Rockefeller Foundation announcement is online.
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