WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Atlantic Council is pleased to announce today the 2018 Millennium Fellows. With a 3.2 percent acceptance rate, the program is among the most competitive professional development opportunities in the international affairs and policy fields. In 2018, over 655 people from 100 countries applied to become a Millennium Fellow and only 21 outstanding candidates were selected. The Atlantic Council launched this fellowship in 2015 in an effort to broaden the international affairs community beyond traditional policy and defense professionals through the professional development of young leaders under the age of thirty-five.

The Millennium Fellowship is open to rising leaders and innovators around the world committed to achieving transformational change in their communities, countries, and professional fields with a global impact. This year, fellows include elected representatives and senior government officials, rising executives at fortune 500 companies and global firms, artists, academics, and technologists, from twelve countries representing North America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, and South, East, and Central Asia. A full list of Millennium Fellows is available at www.millenniumfellowship.org.

Fellows participate in high-level international gatherings and study tours around the world. This year, fellows will participate in the 2018 NATO Summit in Brussels, specifically the public component of the summit – a conference hosted in Partnership with NATO on the grounds of the official summit site titled NATO Engages: The Brussels Summit Dialogue. A partnership with the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the US Department of State’s Mission to NATO will support participation by 100 “next generation delegates” representing countries across NATO, including Millennium Fellows, in the event. Next generation delegates will have the unique opportunity to interact with their senior counterparts, including heads-of-state, and other senior leaders attending the official NATO Summit proceedings. As such, the event represents not only a unique opportunity for professional development, but also creates an essential bridge between the current and the rising generations of decision makers in Alliance. Program director Daniel Bennett quotes:

“Gatherings such as the NATO Summit which bring together key actors from around the world at the same time only take place a few times each year. For a young person, especially one outside the traditional security field, it can be very difficult to attend. However, if you are able to create a pathway to join such events, it creates a particularly unique opportunity to build relationships with your peers and interact with counterparts in senior roles that is almost impossible to recreate in any setting other than an official Summit – there are no other venues where you can gather young leaders from around the world alongside ministers, heads-of-state, and other very senor people at this scale. It’s a valuable and rare platform that can prepare a young person for future leadership roles in a way that model-UN meetings, skills trainings, and academic experiences can’t.”

For more information about the Millennium Leadership Program, please contract Daniel Bennett, Director of the Millennium Leadership Program at dbennett@atlanticcouncil.org.