October 15, 2025
A member of the Jury since 2025, Marcelo Mena is the founding CEO of the Global Methane Hub, the world’s first globally coordinated philanthropic effort dedicated to reducing methane emissions, which has advanced policies and projects in over 150 countries and leveraged over $20 billion in climate finance. A biochemical engineer who earned his MS and PhD in environmental engineering from the University of Iowa with a postdoctoral fellowship at MIT, Mena served as Chile’s Environment Minister and Undersecretary (2014-2018) under President Michelle Bachelet, where he achieved landmark accomplishments, including implementing South America’s inaugural carbon taxes for power generation and vehicle sales, orchestrating a pioneering coal phase-out agreement, establishing 45,000 square kilometers of national parks, and protecting 1.3 million square kilometers of ocean—helping increase Chile’s protected areas from 8% to 36%. Currently a professor at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, Mena has received numerous accolades for his environmental leadership, including awards from NASA, the EPA, UNEP, and National Geographic; a Fulbright fellowship; and appearing in the TIME100 Climate list for 2024.
