2025 Annual Letter

Sunnylands: Where Dialogue Drives Change

Imagine meeting someone whose job is to bring leaders with opposing viewpoints together to respectfully exchange ideas and seek solutions to the world’s most urgent challenges. In today’s volatile national and global political climate, you might find yourself asking—perhaps with a touch of sympathy—“So, how’s that going?”

Well, that is the mission my Sunnylands colleagues and I are pursuing. In these uncertain times, bringing diverse perspectives together face-to-face may indeed be difficult and even a bit risky, but it is more important than ever. Whether focused on diplomacy, health and hunger, or civic life, Sunnylands’ dialogues spark real change in the world.

Set against sweeping desert and mountain views, Sunnylands quietly fulfills its mission, rooted in its founding documents, to host global leaders for focused dialogues that promote peace and encourage international agreement. No speeches. No panel discussions. Just candid conversation designed to break down barriers and turn bold ideas into innovative solutions.

In this year’s annual letter, we highlight a few convenings held at the Sunnylands estate in California’s Coachella Valley—as well as several off-site gatherings—that made a meaningful difference over the past twelve months. We also invite you to explore our two previous annual letters to learn even more about Sunnylands’ mission, our convening models, and our role in these unique gatherings.

We hope that these vignettes provide inspiration for what is possible when the right people come together, in the right setting, with a shared commitment to pursue and achieve change.

We also want to share some exciting operational developments, including new construction that will expand our capacity for future convenings, and details about our public programs and tours for the more than one hundred thousand visitors to Sunnylands who come each year.

Embedding Arts and Culture into American National Policy

New economic and medical research suggests policymakers should treat arts and culture as strategic national assets. Yet in the United States, the arts remain undervalued. The creative sector generates nearly 5% of GDP and supports 5.4 million jobs, surpassing agriculture and transportation in economic impact. Medical research reveals that arts and culture produce measurable neurological effects—leading to faster patient recovery, better student outcomes, and stronger community cohesion. And on the global stage, we know that arts and culture help strengthen democracy, build people-to-people ties, and make our diplomacy more effective. This data calls for a sustained, integrated national arts and culture policy approach. This fall, in partnership with International Arts & Artists, we convened bipartisan leaders from government, journalism, philanthropy, civil society, the tech sector, medicine, and the creative sector to develop an actionable framework to embed arts and culture into national policymaking.

Presenters included Creative Growth, an extraordinary program that supports artists with developmental disabilities; the Rancho Mirage High School Glee Choir; a student poet who recited a commissioned piece; and the Armed Services Arts Partnership, who demonstrated how their free arts programming can help active-duty military, veterans, and their families.

Key goals of this convening included establishing bicameral support for art and culture by creating a Senate Arts Caucus, expanding bipartisan House Arts Caucus membership, scheduling regular briefings for policymakers, nurturing future arts policy leaders through fellowships and other academic engagements, and highlighting research on the arts’ positive impact on jobs, health, veterans, and rural economic development.

Local Leaders, Leading Nationally

Discord and stalemate seem to characterize the current state of U.S. national politics. Yet, less in the spotlight, mayors across the country are doing the demanding work of governing: solving local problems, building vibrant communities, and successfully delivering vital services to their constituents.

Such local work is critical to the strength of our nation’s economic and social fabric. To support them, in February 2025, Sunnylands partnered with national non-profit Accelerator for America (AFA) to host a convening on innovative solutions to local challenges at which a diverse, bipartisan group of eleven mayors shared their approaches to addressing local issues with national implications such as access to housing and capital, workforce development, climate change, and artificial intelligence.

A month later, AFA compiled the mayors’ recommendations to create a “Stress Test for Cities,” an innovative new tool to help local leaders proactively assess the impact of reduced federal funding and explore how to better prepare for such changes.

Beyond developing this practical new resource, our time together fostered lasting relationships among mayors, philanthropists, and experts. Our hope is that these cross-sector connections will continue to spark new partnerships and uncover innovative solutions to the unique challenges local leaders face.

The vast implications of artificial intelligence emerged as a common thread woven across many of our convenings this past season, at times a tool of extraordinary promise, and, at others, an urgent challenge demanding our collective attention.

The Promise

Extreme weather events, including floods, droughts, heat waves, and hurricanes threaten farmers’ livelihoods across the globe. In the United States and Europe, AI-powered forecasts help farmers prepare for such events, boosting productivity and food security. But in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, even basic forecasts are often unreliable or absent, leaving millions vulnerable.

The disparities are stark. Take, for example, radar stations. According to World Meteorological Organization data, in 2023, the United States and EU operated 636 weather radar stations for a combined population of 1.1 billion. Yet, 1.2 billion people in Africa, where extreme weather events pose enormous challenges to agricultural productivity, relied on a mere thirty-seven weather radar stations, many of which were outdated.

Hundreds of millions of smallholder farmers in low- and middle-income countries would immediately benefit from access to modern forecasting technologies that could enhance food security, resilience, and prosperity.

To seize this opportunity, Sunnylands partnered with the Agricultural Innovation Mission for Scale (AIM for Scale), a global initiative backed by the Gates Foundation and the United Arab Emirates, to convene experts in agriculture, finance, meteorology, and AI. Their goal: harness AI to improve weather forecasting for millions of small-scale farmers, and in doing so, strengthen food systems against a changing climate.

As a direct result of this convening, AIM for Scale announced over $1 billion in support for advanced weather forecasting technologies at COP29, the UN’s 2024 climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan. Among these commitments, the Human-Centered Forecasts (HCF) Initiative at the University of Chicago received a catalytic grant from the government of the United Arab Emirates—brokered by AIM for Scale—to help governments leverage AI tools to better predict changing weather patterns.

HCF is already delivering real-world impact. This summer, it helped India provide targeted, practical guidance to farmers nearly a month ahead of the 2025 monsoon season—a major step forward in creating actionable tools to help food producers adapt to climate change, and one we are proud to have supported.

The Challenge

In December 2024, Sunnylands partnered with RAND to convene a retreat on the disruptive geopolitical implications of artificial intelligence. Around our table, senior national security officials from both the outgoing Biden Administration and the incoming Trump Administration, technology executives and founders, academics, and policy leaders engaged in candid and, frankly, sobering discussions about AI’s potential impact on global stability.

RAND has since carried forward the research and institutional leadership that grew out of this gathering, including the establishment of a new Center on the Geopolitics of Artificial General Intelligence and a stream of influential publications. But it was the convening at Sunnylands that provided the catalytic space for these conversations to begin, and outcomes to form. The retreat also launched a novel dialogue among experts, including new simulations and analyses first evaluated at the estate, underscoring Sunnylands’ power to bring together diverse perspectives at the right moment.

Advances in AI have since accelerated, with frontier models surpassing benchmarks once thought unreachable. As this technology reshapes our economies, security, and societies, Sunnylands will continue to convene leaders to grapple with the challenges and opportunities of this transformative new era.

A Call for Entrepreneurship

The United States shares many qualities with a startup—it is a nation born out of a mix of necessity, opportunity, and disruption, and fueled by independence and an entrepreneurial spirit. It is a land of small businesses and bold ideas that sparked technological revolutions.

But, today, is that spirit fading? Have the barriers to starting a business simply grown too high? A 2022 poll revealed that over 90% of respondents believe starting a business today is hard or very hard.

In January, Sunnylands partnered with Right to Start, a nonprofit committed to expanding entrepreneurial opportunity across the United States, to convene a diverse group of leaders to craft and endorse a national action plan that positions entrepreneurship as a cornerstone of economic renewal.

Informal Conversations Leading to Change

We extend our convening model worldwide when it is helpful to further our mission, especially during the summer months in the desert. Over the last twelve months, we hosted Sunnylands gatherings around the globe—from New York to San Francisco, from Germany to South Korea, Ethiopia, and beyond.

While not “typical” Sunnylands retreats, these lunches, dinners, and workshops also make an impact, providing the building blocks for future convenings and mechanisms to advance outcomes from previous retreats. For example, in Addis Ababa in July, Sunnylands hosted the Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations for exploratory discussions around increasing private sector investment and economic development in Africa. In October, Sunnylands further explored these ideas at dinners with the Music Economy Development Initiative, Global Citizen, and the Ford Foundation, this time in Washington, D.C.

We also co-hosted off-site dialogues in our global cooperation area of focus. In Italy and in Germany, Sunnylands brought together leaders from the United States, Europe, and Asia to examine evolving relations with China, fostering shared strategies on risk reduction, technology, and economic resilience. In Palo Alto, we supported the Hoover Institution in its fourth Indo-Pacific Security Dialogue, held in partnership with U.S. Indo-Pacific Command. And we learned at a meeting in Seoul that the Sunnylands Initiative on Enhancing Democratic Partnership in the Indo-Pacific inspired the Japanese Diet’s new Caucus on Universal Values.

Exciting Changes to the Sunnylands Estate

Retreat participants often remark that the Sunnylands estate is a magical place to gather, observing that the setting itself contributes to fruitful discussions among thoughtful guests. I will never take for granted the special feelings stirred by being there—I feel transported to another world, one that welcomes the perspectives, feelings, and arguments of others. The stunning natural desert environment and the art in the estate are inspirations.

We are also beneficiaries of the Annenbergs’ patronage of important architecture. Participants at a Sunnylands convening stay in either the A. Quincy Jones mid-century modern house, which has ten guest rooms, or one of the three guest cottages, also designed by A. Quincy Jones, for twelve guests among them. Our ideal retreat is for 18-20 participants, a size conducive to focused discussion and thoughtful exchanges. However, at times, when addressing a complicated topic, especially one requiring multilateral and multisectoral input, we realized that we needed to expand our numbers. Given our capacity, we have relied on local hotels to supplement our guest rooms.

That has begun to change. We recently completed construction on the new Tamarisk Cottage, which not only expands our overnight capacity by several guest rooms but also establishes a dynamic gathering nucleus in the cluster of guest cottages.

Sunnylands: A Legacy of Leadership and Community

When Walter and Leonore Annenberg created The Annenberg Foundation Trust at Sunnylands, they envisioned their home as a place not just where global leaders could meet, but also where the local community is welcome.

From September 2024 to June 2025 (before our annual summer closure), more than 130,000 people visited Sunnylands to learn about its history, including the visits of seven U.S. presidents, British royalty, and Hollywood legends, and to stroll the gardens and historic estate.

In 2013, the Trust welcomed its eighth U.S. president: Barack Obama, who returned three times for official meetings—a summit with China’s president in 2013, a visit with the King of Jordan in 2014, and a gathering of Asian heads of state and government in 2016.

Beyond its diplomatic legacy, Sunnylands is a vibrant hub for public engagement, offering guided tours and free programs like family days, outdoor films and concerts, yoga in the gardens, and much more. Through partnerships with community organizations such as Raices Cultura and Mobius, we are welcoming a younger and more diverse audience—creating space for meaningful connection and fulfilling the Annenbergs’ vision of inclusion and hospitality.

Final Thoughts

To our partners, past and present, and friends of Sunnylands, we admire your work to advance global peace and security, improve health and food security, and strengthen America’s democratic republic—the areas of focus for our convenings. Major challenges impede progress on all these fronts, yet the knowledge and resources exist to enact solutions that could make a meaningful difference in the United States and around the world. What has been missing is the political and social will to solve problems together with genuine engagement across our divides. On behalf of all of us here at Sunnylands, we look forward to collaborating with, and learning from, others who share our commitment to this approach.