What the community makes possible

Alex Muñoz is a World Fellow. Constanza Gómez Mont is a Climate Fellow. They were never in the same cohort and never sat in the same classroom. They found each other anyway, through the community that surrounds both programs, and what came out of it is a platform to help coastal communities protect their own waters.

This would never have happened if it wasn't for this common venue, this common place where fellows from different places meet.

Alex Muñoz

Alex Muñoz came to the World Fellows program with twenty years of marine conservation behind him and a quiet worry. The work had gone well. That was the problem.

“As successful as we had been, the things that we did that took us there wouldn't take us to the next level of impact that the world needs.”

Constanza Gómez Mont came to the Climate Fellows program looking for something she could not find in her own field. She builds and governs artificial intelligence for a living, and what she wanted was people who did not.

“My expectation was getting to know other people from around the world that were leading relevant and valuable processes, not necessarily in my specific field of expertise,” she says. “To understand complementary approaches and practices and leaderships was important.”

What she got, in her words, was a platform to test her ideas and the peer support of new friendships. What neither of them expected was each other.

Two programs, one community

Their paths crossed at Yale twice, years apart, and neither crossing was planned.

The first was at a World Fellows gathering that Constanza attended as a guest, before she had applied to anything. Alex was speaking about marine protected areas across Latin America. She went up to him afterward and asked whether he ever did anything with all the data he had. Someone photographed the exchange. Neither of them remembered it happening.

Years later, Alex was invited back to speak on ocean conservation as part of the Yale Climate Fellows program. That's where Constanza and Alex reconnected. When a funding call came around and he needed someone who understood AI, he knew exactly who to call.

“It was quite great that Yale, in a way, put us together,” Alex says. “Every time we met it was very electric. We found our ideas, and we came up with new ideas, and then we thought about new people, and it hasn't stopped since then.”

The collaboration that followed is a platform, now in alpha and being tested with communities in Mexico, that uses AI to help coastal communities propose and manage their own marine protected areas. Roughly a tenth of the ocean is protected today. The target is nearly a third by 2030. Reaching it one expedition at a time is not possible, and putting the work in the hands of the people who already know those waters might be.

Constanza is exact about the role of the technology. “It's not a matter of using AI for efficiency. It's rather how do you govern the use of this technology for purpose.”

Why the bonds hold

Ask either of them what the fellowship gave them, and neither starts with a skill.

“We learned a lot about leadership, and how to deal with complex problems, and how to negotiate, and so many useful skills,” Alex says. “But what really changed my experience was creating these very deep and meaningful bonds with my other fellows.”

He describes a cohort carrying a great deal. Some had lived through war. Some had worked through disease outbreaks. Some came from government, some from Indigenous communities. “All of them had very big challenges in their life, and they had somehow managed to lead important processes in very constructive ways. Instead of just complaining, or just suffering their difficult experiences, they decided to do something about it. Being friends with them was quite an honor.”

Constanza describes the same thing, and notes how fast trust forms. “You're together for a week, and then you form friendships that are very sustainable in time, because the level of vulnerability and openness among peers is quite unique.”

She is equally clear that the support did not stop when the program did. The ILC team, she says, has been a constant source of both inspiration and support long after her cohort ended.

Curated, not orchestrated

Neither of them thinks the collaboration was engineered, and both think that matters.

“There's a bit of serendipity,” Constanza says. “I've been in fellowships that kind of force the match, and in my experience it didn't work, because it felt like that was the expected outcome. For us it was based on tangible need and possibility.”

What the community offers instead is proximity. People who would never have met, meeting anyway, and staying in touch long enough for something to become possible. Alex still returns to the network regularly, across cohorts and across programs, and says new ideas come out of it every time.

Asked what they would tell the fellows who come next, they answered within seconds of each other.

“Be open to be surprised.”

“No expectations, and let yourself evolve.”

Alex added one more thing, and it was less gentle. “Don't forget how useful you can be in addressing global problems. This is not just a social network. This is about becoming more useful, to help address the very difficult problems that humanity and the planet are facing.”