(Front row): Daniele Poponi, Stephanie Klak, Jennie Dodson; (Middle row): Helen Fairclough, Julie Anderson, Joonhyung Ahn; (Back row): Lindsay Brown, Sharon Kearney, Jia Zhang (joined by phone: Irmgard Herold)

The Mission Innovation Secretariat provides a stable, enduring resource to drive forward MI activities and achieve the vision and impact outlined in MI’s Enabling Framework and Action Plan. The Secretariat is made of up individuals from a number of MI member countries from across the globe. While the team typically collaborates via email and via regular telephone calls, once a year, they meet face-to-face to delve into strategy, prioritization and work-planning.

Earlier last month, the team took advantage of presence of some of its members at UN Climate Action Week events to hold its 2019 face-to-face meeting in New York City. Much of the focus of this meeting was to ensure that the MI Secretariat is primed and ready to support MI over the next months, so that it can maximize its potential by mid-2020 and is prepared for a decision on the next steps for global energy innovation collaboration, aligned with global climate and energy access priorities. The Secretariat concluded that the main priorities over the next year must be aligned with MI’s goal to deliver and demonstrate impact, to put MI high on the global climate and clean energy innovation agenda, and to raise ambition and lay groundwork for a decision on the future of MI at the 2020 Ministerial meeting.

The MI Secretariat Gathering was hosted by WSP, which provides engineering and design services in the Transportation & Infrastructure, Property & Buildings, Environment, Power & Energy and Resources and Industry sectors. The entire team would like to extend its warmest thanks to Tom Lewis and his team for their excellent hosting, and for giving an overview of some of the inspiring work it is doing in the sustainability domain. They would also like to sincerely thank our colleagues at the Global Covenant of Mayors for making the introductions.