MENLO PARK, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb 24, 2025--
One Mind™, a leading mental health non-profit based in Napa Valley, CA, today announced the 2025 cohort of its flagship One Mind Accelerator program. Thanks to considerable contributions from this year’s supporters, the new cohort will grow from 10 to 16 companies and an official alumni program will offer year-round support for all past and present participants. The 16 early-stage startups spanning Pre-Seed, Seed, and Series A, selected from ~200 applicants, will participate in an intensive 10-week immersion program focused on fundraising, business development, company building, and founder development. By supporting emerging companies through the Accelerator, One Mind seeks to positively impact the lives of people facing mental health challenges by advancing precision psychiatry, and making high quality mental healthcare more accessible, affordable, and equitable.
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This is the third cohort for the One Mind Accelerator since the program’s launch in 2023. The sixteen companies selected to participate in the 2025 session are:
“We are honored to welcome these 16 groundbreaking early-stage startups to the 2025 One Mind Accelerator,” said Kathleen M. Pike, PHD, CEO of One Mind. “Advances in mental health understanding, groundbreaking brain research, and rapid developments in AI and computing technology are converging to revolutionize the way we protect mental health and treat mental illness. This One Mind Accelerator cohort is leading the charge, combining scientific, technological, and business model innovation to enhance health and improve quality of life for everyone affected by mental health conditions — which in one way or another includes us all.”
This year’s session commences today with an in-person open week of programming from February 24-28 in Menlo Park, CA, followed by eight weeks of virtual programming, and a final capstone week also to be held in-person in Menlo Park from April 28-30. The One Mind Accelerator leverages One Mind’s extensive network of scientists, investors, entrepreneurs, operators, policymakers, payers, providers, mental health advocates, and more, to serve as mentors and subject matter experts to the selected companies.
"A high level of programmatic customization to each company’s needs and roadmap is a key cornerstone of the program," said Carmine Di Maro, Executive Director of the One Mind Accelerator. "This year, we've built a robust infrastructure of payer, provider, biopharma and medtech, and lived experience advisory councils to deliver unparalleled access and expertise to the cohort. Combined with the support of our world-class network of philanthropic supporters and partners, we're seeking to maximally accelerate innovation in the mental health ecosystem through these companies.”
Key highlights of the 2025 opening week programming include a keynote by Vijay Pande, PHD, Founder and Managing Partner, a16z BioHealth; an Investor Panel with representatives from Khosla Ventures, Satori Neuro, and GreyMatter Capital; a Payer Panel with current and former representatives from Cigna, CVS Health, Headway, and Optum; a Provider Panel with leadership from Massachusetts General Hospital, Kaiser Permanente, and Intermountain Health; and a BioPharma & MedTech Industry roundtable with current and former representatives from Alto Neuroscience, Bristol Myers Squibb, Boehringer Ingelheim, COMPASS Pathways, Johnson & Johnson, Medtronic, Otsuka, amongst others.
As a 501(c)3 nonprofit, One Mind is grateful to receive generous philanthropic support from private donors, foundations, and corporate sponsors who together make the One Mind Accelerator possible. These include Bank of America and the Baszucki Group as lead supporters, as well as support from Alto Neuroscience, Alzheimer’s Foundation of America, Anthony Pritzker Family Foundation, Green Bridge Family Foundation, Indianapolis Colts Kicking The Stigma, Penner Family Foundation, Resonance Philanthropies, TMCity Foundation, Visible Ventures, and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati.
For additional information and questions about the One Mind Accelerator, including about the closing week from April 28 to April 30, please contact Carmine Di Maro, Executive Director, One Mind Accelerator: carmine.dimaro@onemind.org
About One Mind™
One Mind is dedicated to advancing research and driving innovation to address today’s mental health crisis. With science as our foundation and people at the heart of our mission, One Mind supports early-career scientists with bold ideas, empowers passionate entrepreneurs developing real-world solutions, and leads a global coalition of business leaders committed to improving mental health in the workplace.
Founded in 1995 by Shari and Garen Staglin following their son Brandon’s diagnosis with schizophrenia, One Mind was created to bridge critical gaps in mental health research funding and patient support. Guided by this enduring purpose, One Mind strives to transform knowledge into actionable solutions that foster mental health and healing for individuals whose lives are impacted by mental illness.
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BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — Against a backdrop of rising global tensions and energy market instability, governments from around 50 countries will gather Friday in Colombia’s Caribbean city of Santa Marta for a summit aimed at accelerating the shift away from fossil fuels.
The April 24–29 conference, co-hosted by Colombia and the Netherlands, will bring together ministers, subnational governments, academics and civil society groups to discuss how to move beyond oil, gas and coal while ensuring the transition is “just, orderly and equitable,” organizers said.
The meeting reflects growing frustration among some governments and advocates that decades of U.N. climate negotiations have failed to directly address fossil fuel production — the main driver of global warming — prompting the Santa Marta summit to push the issue outside formal talks.
Organizers say the gathering is intended to open space for a politically sensitive debate that has long been avoided in international climate negotiations.
“It is definitely a political space. We are opening a space for discussion that does not exist,” Colombia’s environment minister, Irene Vélez Torres, told The Associated Press in an interview ahead of the summit.
Unlike formal U.N. climate negotiations, the meeting is not expected to produce binding commitments. Instead, officials say the goal is to generate a set of proposals and build coalitions of countries willing to move faster on phasing out fossil fuels.
“We’ve also seen climate action unfortunately fall down the list of government priorities,” said Claudio Angelo, head of international policy at the Observatorio do Clima think tank in Brazil.
Nations from Europe, Latin America, Africa and Asia, many of which play key roles in fossil fuel production or consumption, will attend. The United States and Saudi Arabia — two of the world’s largest oil producers — will not, underscoring divisions between countries pushing for a faster transition and those more closely tied to fossil fuel interests.
Under the Paris Agreement — the 2015 global climate accord — countries set their own emissions targets, meaning no international process can compel governments to phase out fossil fuels.
The summit is part of a broader push to move climate diplomacy beyond emissions targets and toward directly confronting fossil fuel production — a politically sensitive issue that has long divided countries.
Some advocates say new approaches are needed to close what they see as a major gap in global climate policy.
“Fossil-free zones turn global climate goals into concrete geographic decisions,” said Andrés Gómez of the Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative, referring to proposals to designate areas where oil, gas and coal extraction would be off-limits, particularly in ecologically sensitive regions.
Indigenous leaders involved in the process say they are pushing governments attending the Santa Marta summit to adopt fossil-free zones as part of their transition plans.
“For Indigenous peoples, stopping fossil fuel extraction is not only a climate imperative — it is essential to defending our territories, our governance systems and our right to self-determination,” said Juan Carlos Jintiach, executive secretary of the Global Alliance of Territorial Communities, a coalition of Indigenous and local community organizations representing millions of people across forest regions worldwide.
He added that governments must move “from commitments to implementation” by integrating fossil-free zones into national energy transition plans.
Analysis by advocacy groups shows that oil and gas concessions already overlap with vast areas of tropical forest and Indigenous territories, underscoring the scale of the challenge.
The conference comes at a time of heightened geopolitical uncertainty, including the war in Iran, which has disrupted global energy markets and threatened supply through the Strait of Hormuz — a critical route for roughly a fifth of the world’s oil.
The resulting price spikes are already being felt far beyond energy markets.
“Oil prices don’t just stay in energy markets — they move straight into people’s lives,” said Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland and a leading climate justice advocate expected to attend the Santa Marta conference, speaking at a press conference ahead of the event.
“Impacts are hitting the most vulnerable hardest, as always, while oil companies reap windfall profits,” she said.
In her interview, Vélez said such instability should accelerate — rather than delay — the transition.
“The crisis — and let’s call it what it is — the war in the Middle East has triggered a global crisis,” she said. “In this case, I believe the movement should be toward radicalizing the green agenda and the transitions.”
Some analysts warn that supply shocks could push countries to increase fossil fuel production in the short term, even as they commit to long-term climate goals — highlighting the tension between energy security and climate action.
That tension is particularly visible in Latin America, where many economies rely heavily on oil, gas and mining exports even as governments position themselves as climate leaders. Colombia, one of the region’s top oil producers and home to roughly 6% of the Amazon rainforest, depends on crude exports for a significant share of government revenue and foreign income.
At the same time, Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s government has pledged to halt new oil exploration and push for a global phaseout of fossil fuels.
“Economic and fiscal dependence is a problem, and it is perhaps the main challenge we face,” Vélez said.
Financial constraints are also expected to shape discussions. Many developing countries face high levels of public debt and limited fiscal space, making it difficult to invest in renewable energy and other elements of the transition.
Civil society groups say that without reforms to the global financial system, these constraints will continue to slow progress.
“Moving away from fossil fuels requires, without a doubt, a careful economic and energy transition plan,” said Carola Mejía of the Latin American and Caribbean Network for Economic, Social and Climate Justice.
Gabriella Bianchini of Global Witness said the stakes go beyond climate alone.
“As people everywhere suffer the consequences of oil-driven conflict, it’s never been clearer that the world needs to leave the fossil fuel era behind,” she said. “Santa Marta is a chance for governments and communities to grab the bull by the horns and take action toward a greener, more equitable and peaceful world.”
She added that while U.N. climate talks remain crucial, they have repeatedly struggled to deliver meaningful progress on fossil fuels.
“Santa Marta represents space for governments to work on the one plan we know will stave off the worst impacts of climate breakdown: a rapid and just transition away from fossil fuels,” Bianchini said.
Observers say a key question will be whether the meeting can produce a clearer political signal on an issue that has remained largely unresolved in global climate talks.
“If we think about it, the conference is that turning point where, collectively, we decide to be on the right side of history,” environment minister Vélez said.
The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
Coal piles sit near a chemical plant in Datong, China, Saturday, March 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)
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