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Writer's pictureC Minds

C Minds celebrates more than 10 years of impact and presents its 2023-2026 strategy



A message from our Founder and President, Constanza Gómez Mont

  • C Minds celebrates more than a decade of impact and profound transformations in Latin America.

  • Our new three-year strategy includes the launch of our second spinout, Eon Institute, the founding of the Women's Leadership Lab, and the design of a global strategy for the use of new technologies for biodiversity conservation and climate action.


For more than a decade, C Minds has been a think-and-action tank dedicated to transforming ideas into action in the fields of public, social, and environmental innovation.


During this time, we have led, together with our partners, initiatives that have left their mark in the areas of digital transformation and technology for social good in Mexico and other Latin American countries, promoting dialogues and collaborations on cutting-edge topics for the region. We have generated new methodologies, global regulatory instruments, public policies, and implemented use cases in areas such as government innovation, health, education, climate change, financial inclusion, and gender equality, among others.


Our institutional strength lies in our deep commitment, as a team, to social transformation projects, working closely with our partners and the community, focusing on the smallest details, and always placing people at the center of our work.


We want to express our deepest gratitude to all the people who have been part of C Minds´ team and to our advisors and partners of each project. Without these people and institutions that have believed in us, none of this would have been possible.



After a decade of learnings, deep reflections, and the recognition of our impact at multiple levels, we are more convinced than ever of the power of cross-sector collaborations to find more sustainable solutions, the potential of new technologies to close gaps in the access to opportunities in our region, and the importance of guiding their ethical and human-rights approach.


For this reason, in addition to celebrating more than 10 years of impact, we are also presenting our new three-year strategy 2023-2026, which amplifies and strengthens the elements that have distinguished us, as C Minds, since our founding, including:


  1. Being strategic partners to lead multi-sector initiatives

  2. Training of talent and women in leadership positions

  3. Leading cutting-edge work in emerging issues in the field of social and technological innovation


We are also launching 3 strategic elements that respond to the nascent challenges of this period and complement our field of action. These include:



1. Launching our second spinout: Eon Institute

2. Founding the Women´s Leadership Lab

3. Presenting a global strategy, through our Future of Earth, for the use of emerging technologies for climate action and biodiversity conservation

This is how we start - with great enthusiasm and commitment - this new stage of C Minds, betting on these 3 new components and expanding our interest in frontier topics and technologies. These include Generative AI, AI for gender and care economies, new immersive technology platforms, systems for decentralized governance, brain-tech, and Web3 applications, exploring the new opportunities they provide and addressing the ethical challenges they present.


Our conviction to deepen our institutional value to strategize and design multidimensional initiatives, with multiple actors and in various countries, is stronger than ever. In this sense, our spinouts (PIT Policy Lab y Eon Institute), our three established labs, and the new lab** - as well as our historical and new partners and local communities - are and will continue to be key elements to achieve our new ambitious goals.


You can read more details below!







- Constanza Gómez Mont,

Founder and Principal of C Minds,

on behalf of the entire team.


 

We will continue to amplify the elements that make us a unique organization



For our new 2023-2026 three-year strategy, we will amplify and strengthen the elements that have distinguished C Minds since its founding, including:


1. Being strategic partners to lead multi-sector initiatives:


We will continue to be a partner of choice of multilateral institutions, companies, and key players for significant transformations in the field of tech ethics and tech for social and environmental impact with inclusive and fair processes and benefits.


For a decade, we have been selected by prestigious multilateral organizations, development funds, and companies such as the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the British Embassy in Mexico, the German Society for International Cooperation (GIZ), Google, Huawei, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), Microsoft, New America, UNESCO, United Nations Interregional Institute for Crime and Justice Research (UNICRI), the World Economic Forum (WEF). multiple local and national governments and academic institutions to strategize and execute processes and initiatives that include advocacy in public policy, governance of new technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, and community impact.


Our partners define us as an organization that understands and transforms the visions of multiple actors with different agendas into coordinated strategies to generate tangible results.


For example, in 2013 we co-led one of the largest intersectoral civic innovation exercises in Mexico City, Mapaton; at the end of 2018, C Minds co-designed the IDB's cross-cutting Artificial Intelligence strategy for Latin America and the Caribbean, fAIr LAC, back when this agenda was not yet explored in this region. We were one of the 24 global actors selected to develop the first global AI ethics instrument for UNESCO, signed by 192 countries, and we are currently one of the 17 actors (the only ones from Latin America) in charge of leading the global platform of Women in AI ethics. We have also coordinated the WEF Global Council on AI for Humanity, among other global, regional, national, and local advocacy processes that you can see in the section below.


Understanding needs, imagining possibilities, strategizing, and implementing multidisciplinary projects on frontier issues through a systemic lense will continue to be at the heart of what we will continue to do.



2. The training of talent and women in leadership positions:


We will continue to generate leaders as a teaching organization, with a special focus on the empowerment of women. Since our foundation, we have been a platform where women can develop their leadership skills and learn directly how to design and coordinate multisectoral processes to promote a more just, inclusive, and resilient region.


Our goal is to prepare women leaders capable of directing strategies that allow diverse communities to take advantage of the benefits of new technologies and mitigate their negative impacts.


“When I founded C Minds, I always had the vision that it would be a space for more women to develop their leadership skills in the technological and social transformation field. We have always opted for women leadership in order to close gender gaps and to have more women coordinating multidimensional and multisectoral processes. C Minds has always been an incubator for empowered women, which makes me deeply proud.”

– Constanza Gómez Mont,

Founder and Principal of C Minds


We will expand our mentoring schemes for each person that work with us, from interns to area directors. We will continue to pay the same attention both to achieving our goals in each initiative and, in parallel, to strengthening the capacities and developing the leadership skills of each team member.




Part of this vision of consolidating women in leadership positions is carried out through our model inspired by starfishes, designed in 2018. We were inspired by starfishes, as they are able to generate a complete and independent starfish from a severed tentacle, while also regenerating a new tentacle. For us, this meant incubating entire areas in the organization and working with the directors of each area for several years to consolidate their leadership and strengthen their skill-sets so that they could later found a C Minds spinout.


Although the spinouts work independently, they maintain at their core the values and vision of C Minds to achieve a just and inclusive social transformation in the region, taking advantage of new technologies to achieve it. This allows C Minds to scale our impact and grow the ecosystem of women entrepreneurs in our field of action.


We're very proud that the first C Minds spinout happened in 2021, with the launching of the PIT Policy Lab. And this year, we're excited to announce our second spinout, Eon Institute (more on that below).



3. Cutting-edge work in emerging issues in the field of social and technological innovation


We will continue aiming to be a cutting-edge organization in Mexico and Latin America in the exploration and creation of dynamic frameworks, guides for decision-making, tools and public policies on emerging issues in the field of social and technological innovation. We will continue to contribute to a more inclusive understanding of the opportunities and challenges that they entail, creating schemes and proofs of concept so that Mexico and the region become active players in setting standards of both innovative and inclusive technology, having in their DNA a deep understanding of the challenges and possibilities of Latin America. In turn, we will continue to develop instruments to mitigate the ethical and human-rights-related risks of new technological tools.


Our work has focused on frontier issues in the region, namely those that were just beginning to be discussed at the global level, contributing to consolidating the ecosystem and the agenda for these in Mexico and other countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. Some examples include being one of the first organizations in the region to work on civic innovation issues since 2012 including policy and deployed case studies; Artificial Intelligence (AI) governance since 2018; data governance and open banking for financial inclusion since 2019; twin transition policies (digital + sustainability) and emerging technologies for climate action from 2020; and emerging opportunities and considerations as well as governance of the metaverse from 2022.


 

For over 10 years, C Minds has played a crucial role in generating knowledge, creating multi-sector ecosystems for governance, and implementing pioneering projects for Latin America, ensuring that the region takes advantage of the opportunities provided by new technologies, as well as reducing social risks.


Some examples that we have led with the support of our partners:

National coalitions for the prevention of chronic diseases since 2011:

We co-founded the first national coalition, ContraPeso, which brought together more than 110 organizations, directly influencing the publication of the national soft drink tax law, being the first law of this type globally.

Civic innovation and open government at the local level since 2011:

We co-led the government´s working group for the publication of the CDMX Open City Law, the first law of its kind in the world that included topics such as civic innovation and open sourcing. At the same time, we co-led the renowned case of Mapatón (in which more than 4,000 people mapped almost 50,000 kilometers, equivalent to the circumference of the Earth, to obtain data for the first time on bus routes in Mexico City).

Gobernanza para las finanzas abiertas desde 2018:

We were the first organization to work on the topic of Open Banking, Open Banking, bridging international good practices and collaborating with the National Banking and Securities Commission (CNBV), the Banco de Mexico and other actors on the secondary Fintech regulation in Mexico.

AI governance and ethics since 2018:

  • We developed, with the support of the UK Embassy, the Artificial Intelligence Public Policy Report that directly resulted in the publication of the National AI Strategy (2012-2018 Administration), placing Mexico on the map as one of the first 10 countries to have one.

  • We co-founded (and coordinated for the first 3 years) the first multi-sector AI coalition, IA2030MX, for better cross-sector collaborations for AI governance. We coordinated the creation of an AI agenda from the coalition with input from more than 400 people.

  • We worked with Microsoft in the borderplex area (Chihuahua, Texas, and New Mexico), with governments (such as the national government of Mexico and government of Jalisco) for the development of their AI agendas. We worked on government strategies for future job skillsets in the era of AI, and we contributed to projects with the Colombian government and others on national AI agendas and data governance.

  • Together with the IDB, we co-designed its regional AI strategy that included hubs in Mexico, Uruguay, Costa Rica, and Colombia; and we co-directed the first AI living lab for social impact in the region (fAIr LAC Jalisco).

  • We co-led proofs of concept and public policy recommendations for government programs on the use of AI to address post-COVID economic recovery, gender violence, health (specifically, the detection of diabetic retinopathy), and education, among others. With the support of Google, we developed an open AI system to streamline clinical studies during COVID times in countries like Chile; among other applied AI for social good projects .

  • We worked with governments (Government of Chihuahua, Government of Léon, National Government of Mexico, among others) and institutions to navigate the issue of the future of work and digital inclusion.

  • We were pioneers in the region in exploring new participatory governance models through the execution of two public policy prototypes. One for algorithmic transparency with regulators in Mexico (INAI) and another for privacy with regulators in Uruguay (AGESIC and URCDP) through Meta’s Open program Loop together with the IDB, various groups of experts, companies and local institutes.

  • We co-developed global and regional tools for entrepreneurs and decision-makers so they could integrate best practices on AI ethics in their operations.

  • We coordinated various global AI governance processes, including being selected by WEF (coordinators of the Global AI Council for Humanity), UNESCO (co-coordinators/co-chairs for the development of the first global AI instrument, signed by 192 countries), UNICRI, among others, to do so.

We promoted emerging technologies (AI, IoT, sensors, digital tokens, etc.) for the climate and biodiversity agenda since 2020:

  • We created the first global forum on the use of AI for climate action with more than 75 speakers from more than 15 countries and partners and participation of key institutions such as AWS, Climate Change AI, CRIM, FAO, the Government of Quebec, Microsoft AI for Earth, the OECD, The Nature Conservancy, UNESCO, the World Resources Institute, the WWF.

  • In 2020 we founded the globally awarded AI for Climate initiative. In 2022 we founded the first living lab in Latin America for the use of new technologies for the conservation of biodiversity, Tech4Nature México, with the support of IUCN, Tech4All and Cloud from Huawei, the government of Yucatán and collaborators such as UPY and Rainforest Connection, which has already managed to identify more than 116 species with neural networks and an AI system for the conservation of jaguars in Yucatan, becoming a recognized case study.

  • In 2022 we designed the region´s first digital token innovation challenge for the conservation of biodiversity for the IDB Lab, and in 2023 our founder was the coauthor of the first report in the region to explore the opportunities presented by digital tokens and web3 applications for nature protection.

  • In 2023 we created with GIZ the first public policy recommendation for a dual transition (digital and sustainable) in Mexico.

Digital rights for children and adolescents since 2020:

  • During the accelerated digital transition of educational systems during the pandemic, we co-developed with the IDB the first guide for the education sector in Latin America for the use of digital platforms focused on child privacy and safety as well as a supporting report for Ministries of Education and Data Protection Authorities in the region.

  • In 2023, we coordinated multisectoral dialogues and public policy recommendations, with the support of the UK Embassy, on the digital rights of children for Mexican legislators with the participation of the two presidents of the Senate and Deputies commissions for children’s rights and more than 12 experts from all sectors.

Socioeconomic opportunities and inclusive governance schemes of the metaverse since 2022:

  • We have worked with Meta and more than 60 experts in Latin America to provide a deeper understanding of the opportunities and social considerations of the Metaverse as well as on public policy recommendations in the subject. We have also led research and multisector dialogues on the use of augmented reality for education in Mexico.


 

Our work has been covered by global and national media such as Forbes, Expansión, Singularity University, MIT Technology Review, Harvard, El Financiero, NBC, El Economista, among others, and we have received several awards such as the Paris Peace Forum for our work.

Moreover, we have been selected to present our initiatives and perspectives in various key global forums such as COP15, the World AI Summit (Saudi Arabia), World Summit AI of the Americas, Paris Peace Forum, Singularity University Summit, the Global Privacy Assembly (GPA), Asia Pacific Privacy Authorities (APPA) Forum, IDB Lab Forum, Science and Innovation Global Forum, UNESCO, forums of the World Economic Forum, among others.


We have been asked to present our AI work at places like Harvard, Georgetown University, Oxford, the Alan Turing Institute, Tedx, among many renowned institutions in more than 20 countries.


 

What's new in our 2023-2026 three-year strategy?


Apart from continuing to amplify what sets us apart, our commitment to ethical AI governance (among others) and the design and implementation of ambitious strategies with our partners to prove the socio-economic value of emerging technologies, we have some new elements for this new triennial chapter:


1. We are launching our second spinout: Eon Institute


As part of our commitment to promote women entrepreneurs in the field of innovation in Mexico, after 3 years of incubation, the second spinout of C Minds is launched: Eon Institute.


Eon Institute, a new independent and women-led organization, will amplify C Minds' vision for the use of technology to create inclusive opportunities in the region. It will center its work on future-proofing society in light of the accelerated technological changes we are experiencing, centering on Latin America, focusing on topics such as the mysterious Metaverse, guaranteeing online spaces and safe technology for children, privacy-enabled technologies, the future of work and the digital economy.


Through our two independent spinouts, PIT and Eon Institute, C Minds is scaling its impact on our topics of interest and contributing to having more leaders and complementary and collaborative transformation platforms.


2. We are founding the Women's Leadership Lab


On a global level, we have established the Women's Leadership Lab to provide greater visibility and expand what we have been doing since our inception: being a platform to create and strengthen skills for women who seek or are in leadership positions in the field of responsible technology, the governance of new technologies, and Tech Diplomacy.


We are starting, through our Founder, co-designing and co-leading UNESCO’s global advocacy platform for women in AI ethics (Women for Ethical AI), and creating a residency program in Spain for women founders of social transformation initiatives in multiple countries, among other actions.


3. We are presenting a global impact strategy for the use of emerging technologies for climate and biodiversity conservation


Through our Future of Earth Lab, we are launching an ambitious global strategy, starting with Latin America and the Caribbean, which involves the use of new technologies, such as AI, Web 3.0, network sensors, environmental DNA, among others, to enable and scale biodiversity conservation and regeneration actions.


We will support governments with the new paradigm: the Twin Transition (green and digital transition) and we will work with the innovation ecosystem and our partners at a global, regional, and local level to explore and strengthen new decentralized markets for the investment and protection of nature.


 

In short, our new three-year strategy 2023-2026 marks a significant milestone in C Minds’ journey. After more than a decade of impact in the fields of public, social, and environmental innovation, we are excited to present our ambitious goals and renewed approaches: consolidating and amplifying our past and creating spaces for new explorations that will define our future.


And, we hope, together with you, the future of Latin America.



- Constanza Gómez Mont,

Founder and Principal C Minds,

on behalf of the entire team


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