This year, an international program designed for rising leaders counts a Pittsburgher among those helping to turn its vision into a reality.

Each year, 16 leaders in disparate fields of expertise are selected to participate in the Indo-Pacific Leadership Lab. During the yearlong program, they come together via seminars to focus in on a “specific, complex and interconnected” social issue, examining its current responses and exploring community approaches’ connections to local and regional policy.

They then attempt to identify critical gaps in the responses and test new ones in their home communities with guidance from community leaders, experts and mentors. The belief is that defining and resolving the world’s dilemmas requires “inclusion and collaboration.”

Jacquelyn Omotalade, 46, a Homewood native, was tapped to help tackle this year’s focus: the global challenges and risks arising from climate change.

Omotalade is a lawyer and former climate investments national director at Dream.org as well as an expert in environmental law, climate investments, finance and emerging technologies. She runs her own environmental policy consulting firm in Pittsburgh.

Omotalade began in October 2024 and will, through September 2025, help critically examine climate adaptation plans in various countries and explore local communities' approaches to addressing vulnerabilities and challenges presented by the shifting dynamic.

She traveled to Hawaii in December as part of one of three seminars to learn and converse with other experts. Suva, Fiji, is next, followed by Tokyo, Japan.

“Surprisingly, despite being American, I would say that I did not have as deep a knowledge of Hawaii, both its history and its current challenges,” Omotalade said.

Though she knew about Hawaii’s history as a kingdom and its annexation to the United States, she didn’t realize the extent to which the islands were prone to tsunamis. While visiting, she learned about the efforts, “both constructive and not so constructive,” to protect the Hawaiian islands from them via alert systems. 

“It was very interesting to hear both a Hawaiian context and, in the age of sea level rising, compare and contrast it to other nations within the Indo-Pacific — for example, Bhutan or Solomon Islands, Timor-Leste, Samoa.

“It was very interesting to engage in conversations with leaders from all around those regions about how they are thinking about climate change, which has already hit their doors.”

After graduating from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law in 2003, Omotalade secured a Fulbright Scholarship that paid for a research trip to Indonesia, where she studied a group of rural women working as maids in Jakarta. 

Omotalade said that experience helped her in the Indo-Pacific Leadership Lab’s application process, which requires 5-10 years of “deep work or research experience” in an area with “clear connections to climate change mitigation, adaption planning, natural resources or environmental governance.”

The Indo-Pacific Leadership Lab is funded jointly by the East-West Center and the Japan Foundation, two organizations which seek to promote better relations and deepen dialogue among experts between various countries. 

“I think I bring an interesting perspective, having grown up in Southwestern Pennsylvania. And we are not without our own environmental challenges,” Omotalade said. “Having a mom who grew up here as well, having a dad who is from Lagos, Nigeria, bringing that global perspective that we are all in this together.

“We may have very particular local issues and concerns, but when it comes to the end of the day, we all inhabit the same planet. And yes, we need to think and act locally, but we still have to bring that global perspective to the work that we do and understand the interconnectedness of all of us.” 

As the Indo-Pacific Leadership Lab continues through September, Omotalade said she hopes to continue to expand her horizons even further during the next two seminars.

“The standard way of things aren't going to work anymore,” she said. “We really need to be thinking about how we are making our cities more circular in every capacity. From: How are we making sure that most folks don't have to walk more than 15 minutes to access everything that we need? to: How are we reducing or eliminating that reliance on both plastics, petrochemicals and fossil fuels?

“We have to think about other modalities that reduce the reliance of all auto vehicles — not just fossil fuel vehicles, but also EVs as well —and really thinking about how are we doing that in ways that aren't harmful to other communities across the world.”

First Published: January 16, 2025, 10:30 a.m.
Updated: January 17, 2025, 3:05 p.m.