SIPA Celebrates Winners of Columbia’s 2025 Global Policy Challenge

On April 24, SIPA celebrated the winners of its 2025 Global Policy Challenge, a competition that encourages students to develop innovative solutions at the intersection of technology, data, and public policy. This year’s competition focused on four key themes: geopolitical stability, democratic resilience, climate and sustainable development, and inclusive prosperity and macroeconomic stability. 

The challenge is part of a broader Columbia-wide celebration of entrepreneurship and innovation, culminating in a campus-wide event at the Brown Institute, where winning teams gathered to present their ideas. The SIPA awards were announced by Sarah Holloway, codirector of SIPA’s Technology Policy and Innovation concentration and a longtime faculty leader in social entrepreneurship. “The difference between a great idea and a real-world solution often comes down to funding—and for our students, this challenge is game-changing,” said Holloway. “The support they receive doesn’t just validate their ideas; it enables them to build ventures that otherwise might never get off the ground. That’s the power of this competition—it turns possibility into action.” 

The first-place prize of $25,000 was awarded to EnergyOne, an AI-driven financial modeling platform dedicated to facilitating renewable energy investment in emerging markets and developing economies.

“In my second semester, I took Climate Entrepreneurship with Professor Holloway, and the whole idea of the class was to come up with an idea and build a business case,” said Miriam Triassi MIA ’25. “That’s where EnergyOne was actually born.”

After revisiting the project for the Global Policy Challenge, Triassi teamed up with Corentin Donatien MPA ’25, Samuel Dumesh MIA ’26, Riya Yingran Guo MIA ’25, and Maria Jimena Jurado MPA ’25 to develop a comprehensive platform that combines investment analysis, risk assessment, deal management, and brokerage services. 

“We want to facilitate more deals in clean energy by providing a financial platform that serves as a broker-dealer between investors and project developers in the Global South,” Triassi said. “It connects to our studies and to our professional passion—it just really matters to all of us.” 

The team’s efforts extended beyond the technical challenge and also touched on global impact. Guo underscored the project’s motivation to close global equity gaps in technology access. 

“I think the computing resources and the talents in this world utilizing artificial intelligence—infused in development, in clean energy, in all kinds of fields—are just so unequal,” she said. “And we hope to leverage the knowledge that we have to help those in need, that actually can be benefited from these technologies.”

The second-place award of $15,000 was awarded to Palumba, a youth-oriented civic tech tool that has mobilized over 170,000 first-time voters and became the most downloaded political app in Europe. Team members include Pol Villaverde MPA ’26, Alexandra Gernath MPA ’26, and Katharina Reisenbauer MPA ’26.

Sante, a health-tech venture with a tool that leverages AI and GIS to predict disease outbreaks by analyzing real-time socio-demographic and environmental data and is currently being piloted in Brazil, took home the third-place prize of $10,000.

“We use AI and machine learning models to predict infectious disease outbreaks,” said Bruno Kunzler MPA ’25, who cofounded the initiative. “It’s really exciting for me because it’s a chance to apply the machine learning skills I’ve developed at SIPA to tackle a real public policy challenge.” 

Kunzler, who has worked in the health sector for six years, said the project also reflects his personal ties to Brazil, where he completed the first year of his dual degree before joining SIPA. 

“We’re doing this in Brazil - the country where I’m from,” he said. “So it’s like a second layer of meaning for me—using technology to enhance people’s lives in my home country.” His teammates include Mariana Valle MPA ’26, Mirelle Pereira ’26PH, and Victoria Anna Rentrop ’26PH.

At the same event, several SIPA students received the Helen Gurley Brown (HGB) Foundation Prize, an initiative of Campbell Center for Entrepreneurship at Columbia, which is awarded to an outstanding founder or cofounder whose ventures are specifically focused on improving the lives of women and girls around the world.

Sara Gomez Horta MPA ’25 received a $15,000 HGB prize for her startup, Tesoro, a modern wealth platform aimed at expanding access to financial planning for Latinas and offering affordable, bilingual consultations with certified financial planners (CFPs) and investment tools..

The team of Jon Diaz MPA-DP ’25, Julio Intriago ’25TC, Kristina Mincheva ’25GSAS, Anna Veldman MPA-ESP ’24 won $25,000 for their venture RightfulHire, a platform that supports women living in temporary housing in New York City and provides a tailored talent-matching service to  connect them with jobs at small and mid-sized US companies.

“These startup projects by our SIPA students demonstrate the power of entrepreneurial thinking applied to public policy,” said Holloway.