HONOLULU (Mar. 18, 2024) – The East-West Center and Doris Duke Foundation have jointly launched the Equitable Futures Fellowship, a new program focused on building a network of emerging global leaders dedicated to creating futures rooted in equity. Designed to expand the view of who can create policies and positive change, the program aims to enhance the knowledge, leadership capacities, and networks of leaders and creative thinkers across government, communities, advocacy groups, media and technology, artists, and entrepreneurs.

Applications for the Equitable Futures Fellowship are open now through April 15. The program will run from October 2024 through May 2025 and include regular virtual sessions as well as two weeks of in-person activities in Hawaiʻi and one week in New Zealand. Fellows will hear from top experts and draw on their diverse backgrounds to examine challenges together and explore techniques to resolve inequity in its many forms, including gaps in income, health care, and education; impacts of the climate crisis; and challenges to societal pluralism.

“The East-West Center and Doris Duke Foundation have teamed up to launch the Equitable Futures Fellowship in recognition of the need for a new leadership template for our times, one that is inclusive of voices from a wider region and world,” said East-West Center President Suzanne Vares-Lum. “The Equitable Futures Fellowship addresses the critical need to bring together changemakers from various places and backgrounds to form human relationships and new pathways of thinking that will lead to policies and practices that create more equity and opportunity.”

“Every region is weathering challenges of unprecedented complexity. What we need are new leaders with fresh ideas and a more inclusive vision of the future,” said Doris Duke Foundation President and CEO Sam Gill. “We know they are out there. This program aims to find them and equip with the skills that will help them to lead our region and the world.”