Schmidt Futures and Rhodes Trust Launch Global “Rise” Program to Find the Next Generation of Leaders and Support Them for Life

Youth Talent Program Supported by Eric and Wendy Schmidt Seeks Extraordinary 15-17-Year-Olds Committed to Tackling World’s Most Pressing IssuesNEW YORK, Nov. 16, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — Schmidt Futures, in partnership with The Rhodes Trust, announced today the opening of applications for Rising, a new global talent program to find outstanding young people who need opportunity, and support them for life as they use their talents to build a better world. Rise is the anchor program of a broader $1 billion commitment from Eric and Wendy Schmidt.

Rise seeks to identify talented young people, ages 15 to 17, from around the world who have the potential to use their talents to tackle the world’s most pressing issues. The program will build a global community of rising leaders, connecting everyone who applies with peers around the world, free learning resources, and access to additional opportunities from the Rise network of partners. Additionally, each year, Rise will select 100 Global Winners and provide them with a lifetime of personalized support—including scholarships, mentorship, career services, and access to funding to develop their ideas—as they work together to serve others. Rise is working with dozens of global partners—from schools to businesses to local governments—to identify and support talented young people in communities throughout the world. Examples of these partnerships include United World Colleges, Teach For All, Global Citizen Year, African Leadership Group, AMIDEAST, National Youth Council Singapore, and the Latin American Leadership Academy. “Today’s young people will face a rapidly changing world of challenges on a scale unprecedented in human history,” said Wendy Schmidt, Co-founder of Schmidt Futures. “Through this ambitious program, we hope to engage tomorrow’s leaders across the globe, providing education and unique opportunities for them to identify problems, solutions, and ways they can work together, for a lifetime, in the service of humanity.”

“We are living in a time of both significant global challenges and unique global opportunities,” said Eric Schmidt, Co-founder of Schmidt Futures. “With the launch of Rising, we hope to identify and empower the next generation of brilliant leaders around the world in a way that has never been done before. We’ll harness the power of technology to find talented young people who would otherwise go undiscovered or unsupported, connect them in a global community, and give them the resources to use their talents for good throughout their lives.” “Rise is an incredible opportunity to identify talent early and to nurture public-spirited young people who have the potential to do extraordinary things,” said Dr. Elizabeth Kiss, Warden, and CEO of the Rhodes Trust. “At the Rhodes Trust, we have experienced the power of creating a lifelong network of exceptional talent. Whether it is the importance of being part of an innovative community for moments of the intense challenge such as COVID, or sharing insights and expertise in order to tackle longer-standing issues such as climate change, the network of Rhodes Scholars is remarkable and I have every confidence that Rise will be similarly powerful in terms of moral engagement and mutual support.” “Too often we give the opportunity to brilliant young people in need and then walk away,” said Erich Braverman, CEO of Schmidt Futures. “But there are many barriers that keep the most exceptional people from serving others as their life’s work. Rise is the first program of this scale anywhere in the world to create opportunities for this extraordinary talent for life—because the world’s biggest problems need to be sustained attention.”