Breakthrough Generation is an initiative in the Breakthrough Institute’s research program, founded in 2008 to foster the development of a new generation of thinkers and writers capable of finding pragmatic new solutions to today’s greatest challenges in the areas of energy, economy, and environment.
Every summer from June to August, Generation offers a small number of paid ($600 per week), highly competitive, ten-week fellowships to recent college graduates and postgraduates from around the world. Additional travel and housing assistance stipends are available upon acceptance based on an as-needed basis.
The first two weeks of the summer are dedicated to Breakthrough Bootcamp, an intellectual crash course involving intensive reading, writing, and an expert lecture series designed to provide a grounding in the broad-spectrum thinking that informs Breakthrough’s policy agenda. Topics covered include modernization theory, social psychology, aspirational politics and philosophy, economics and innovation policy, and technology policy.
For the remainder of the fellowship, fellows work in small teams divided between three program areas: Energy, Cities, or Food & Farming. Supervised by policy staff, fellows produce policy white papers, reports, and memos. Previous projects have been featured in The New York Times, Newsweek, Time Magazine, the Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, the Harvard Law and Policy Journal, among others, as well as in Congressional testimony.
In addition to research and analysis, fellows attend the Breakthrough Dialogue — an opportunity to interact with the leading thinkers, writers, and scholars in the study of society and the environment, as well as attend talks, debates, and working groups within Breakthrough’s different program areas.