Q+A with Marilia Bezerra, Chief Programmes Officer at the Ikea Foundation

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PowerRise: Thank you for talking to us today. First up, how would you define this moment in GEAPP’s evolution?

Marilia Bezerra: IKEA Foundation was one of the founding partners of GEAPP. I’m joining the board as GEAPP steps into a new phase as an independent entity dedicated to expanding energy access, creating new jobs and cutting the world’s carbon emissions. I’m excited to be part of the team helping renew and realign GEAPP’s strategy to meet the realities of the world today. I look forward to asking some good questions and helping make change at the scale and speed the world needs.

PR: Despite the challenges, what gives you confidence we can succeed?

MB: I was born and grew up in Brazil but have worked my entire professional life in US. I grew up in a country emerging from a dictatorship, facing enormous challenges and with poverty right in front of my eyes. This gave me a strong sense of commitment and an understanding that things can change and environments can shift for the better. The world is facing a period of great disruption. But experience has taught me that by working hard and working together, we can build forward positively.

PR: Alliance-building is hard. What does it take?

MB: My role as director of commitments at Clinton Global Initiative in early 2000s gave me my first taste of how easy it is to say we want to collaborate but how hard it is to actually do it. Building networks and alliances has been a through line in my career. I have seen many alliances emerge and become successful over time. I have battle scars and some good lessons and tips. It’s important to think collectively in a moment when solutions must be collective. We need to ensure all the relevant partners are around the table, especially local partners, if we are going to solve problems in the real world.

PR: How does GEAPP fit into this picture?

MB: The IKEA Foundation joined in creating GEAPP because we really see the intertwined challenges of energy access, climate change and the need to put people at the center of our solutions. As global temperatures rise and the gap between the world’s richest and poorest widens, this has gone from being urgent to being an emergency.

At its heart, just energy access is a systems problem. It comprises of lots of regional, national, sub national systems – including governments, businesses and communities along with philanthropies involved in addressing climate change, energy transition, food security, global health and much more. GEAPP was founded to bring all the actors together and to form the connective tissue to help us all build a fairer, more prosperous and more resilient world.