It’s hard to describe the kind of quiet you find at The Rockefeller Foundation‘s Bellagio Center in Lake Como, Italy. It’s not silence exactly. It’s more like a stillness. The hum of cicadas, the shimmer of Lake Como in the morning light, the rhythm of footsteps on stone paths. It’s the kind of quiet that lets big questions rise to the surface.
For a week this summer, I joined a group of extraordinary leaders at the Bellagio Center as part of the Rockefeller Big Bets Fellowship. The Bellagio Center has hosted Nobel laureates, heads of state, and social innovators from around the globe, and you can feel that legacy in every hallway and room. We moved through the week with a mix of reverence for those who came before us and resolve to tackle our own intractable challenges.
The Fellowship helps leaders refine their big bets, which are bold, systems-level ideas with the potential to drive transformative change. At One Degree our big bet is to build locally led, interoperable digital infrastructure that seamlessly connects people to social services and benefits, and to supercharge it with next-generation AI to leapfrog outdated systems.
Bellagio gave me the space to stress-test our big bet, see our work in a larger context, and expand my own sense of what’s possible. Here are the ideas and moments from Bellagio that changed how I see our work:
The Sky Just Got Higher
In our first Fellowship gathering in D.C., I sketched what I believed was my “sky scenario,” or the place where I dare to dream without limits. In my original future scenario, everyone has an AI assistant, and beneath it lies a robust public digital infrastructure for the social service ecosystem powered by One Degree. Social service AI agents will be able to talk to one another, instantly access accurate information, determine eligibility, handle enrollment and renewals, and guide people toward lasting economic opportunity. It’s a world where anyone who needs help can easily find, understand, and access the services and benefits they deserve, powered by AI, open infrastructure, and true interoperability.
Ambitious, right?
But at Bellagio, I had a realization: that wasn’t actually the sky. It was just our stretch goal. Our true “sky” is even higher: Universal Basic Services, where everyone’s basic needs are met and government works in deep partnership with local community-based organizations to make it happen. In that future, One Degree isn’t just building tools; we’re influencing policy through technology and data, and ensuring that in an AI-driven world, human dignity remains at the center.
When Coal Country Meets Silicon Valley
One afternoon, as we were talking about “unlikely partnerships,” I found myself talking with two Fellows from Appalachia: Jacob Hannah from Coalfield Development Corporation in West Virginia and Colby Hall from Shaping Our Appalachian Region, Inc. (SOAR) in Kentucky.
Their work focuses on communities gutted by the collapse of the coal industry, towns where job losses rippled through every part of life. As they spoke, I heard echoes of something closer to home: the wave of layoffs hitting the tech industry, including my cousin and my brother (both software developers). AI is beginning to reshape the tech labor market the way automation and policy shifts reshaped the coal labor market.
It was a jarring parallel. Economic transitions don’t just “happen.” They can crush people and communities, or they can be managed with foresight and care. Appalachia’s strategies for resilience could hold lessons Silicon Valley urgently needs. That’s what struck me most: in California, we’re so accustomed to exporting our knowledge, goods, and services to the world, yet we rarely pause to consider how the wisdom of other communities could guide us.
This kind of cross-sector, cross-region learning is exactly what the Fellowship is designed to spark, and it’s helping me think about how our big bets must anticipate, and help manage, massive economic transitions.
Frustration in the Ecosystem Map
We also did an exercise where we mapped the ecosystem around our work, and where the money, information, and power flow. I’ve done this exercise before, and the map looked painfully familiar. At the center are community members, surrounded by local governments, CBOs, and healthcare systems, each administering social services and benefits in their own silos. Around them sit One Degree, I&R hotlines, 211s, tech partners, and corporations that have moved into the space, also working in silos.
More than a decade in, the same gaps, silos, and slow-moving players remain. The social services sector often settles for incremental change because of funding limits, resource constraints, political challenges, gatekeeping, or simply because it feels safer. But incrementalism can’t meet the urgency of the need.
At that moment I realized: One Degree’s role has always been—and must continue to be—the disruptor… and to push the ecosystem forward when it would rather stand still. And our big bet is the tool to make that push both possible and sustainable.
Futuring, Not Forecasting
On another day, we pulled out Megatrend cards, which are futuristic prompts that describe large-scale forces already shaping the world, from technological shifts to demographic changes. They’re designed to spark imagination, helping you think beyond the immediate moment and consider how these trends might play out over decades. I loved reading through them. Too often, conversations about the future lean toward fear and loss, but these cards made space for optimism too. Among the trends we explored: AI woven into every aspect of life, growing mismatches between available jobs and workers’ skills, and the rapid urbanization of our planet.
From there, we envisioned our “preferred future” and worked backward, asking: What would need to be true in the next 5, 10, or 20 years to make this real? It reaffirmed something I believe deeply: the future isn’t something we simply adapt to. It’s something we shape. At One Degree, that means investing in AI development and design now, so that we’re not caught unprepared, but instead leading the creation of the future we want.
Economic Opportunity / Mobility / Inequality
Of course, since the Big Bets Fellowship is all about economic opportunity, we spent a lot of time unpacking what that really means. Too often, people use economic mobility, economic opportunity, and economic inequality interchangeably. But they’re not quite the same, and it’s not just about mobility—it’s about tackling inequality at its roots. And that requires shifting policy, particularly at the state level, where decisions on taxation, benefits, and resource allocation can directly shape people’s economic realities.
One example that stood out was New Mexico’s investment in its social safety net programs like childcare, healthcare, and income supports targeted to low- and middle-income families. By dedicating a greater share of tax revenue to these services, the state has seen measurable reductions in poverty rates in recent years.
That’s the power of policy aligned with people’s real lives. And it’s why hyperlocal work (like ours) must connect to long-term policy change. We can’t limit ourselves to day-to-day tasks and tactics; we need to think about how our big bet plugs into the bigger levers that can transform entire systems.
The Urgency of the Work Ahead
I left Bellagio feeling really optimistic about our future, especially being surrounded by the energy of other bold, committed social changemakers. I also left with more than just better and bigger ideas. I left with some more work to do: to sharpen One Degree’s big bet (in prep for the Rockefeller Foundation’s fall amplification event), bring more partners into these big bets, and show that bold, systemic change is not only necessary—it’s possible.
That stillness at Lake Como gave me the space to dream bigger. Back in the noise and urgency of daily life, that stillness has turned into resolve. The future won’t wait. Neither can we.
Huge gratitude to the incredible Rockefeller Foundation team Nathalia A. M. dos Santos (She, Her, Hers) , Sarah Troup Geisenheimer Danielle S. Goonan, IDEO John Won Alex Gallafent Bea Camacho, and Bellagio Center staff Nadia Gilardoni and many others, and to brilliant the U.S. Fellows Tiffany Terrell Dion Dawson Colby Hall Catherine P. Wilson Melissa Bukuru Jennifer Hankins Alexandre Imbot Marina Zhavoronkova Jacob Hannah Paul Huberty (and we missed you Gretchen Fauske) and amazing Asia-Pacific Fellows Aafreen Siddiqui Sherwani Alexia Hilbertidou Anusha Meher Bhargava Bobuchi Ken-Opurum, Ph.D. Eshrat W. Gaurav Godhwani Mustika Wijaya Ristika Putri Istanti Supatchaya “Ann” Techachoochert, PhD Uttam Pudasaini Yasser Naqvi Yumi Son for creating the perfect space for bold ideas, deep conversations, and a little lakeside magic.