Chris Guillot | Founder & Executive Director, AwareNearth

Chris Guillot is a former UN Official and Swiss Diplomat with 25 years of global field experience. An engineer by training, he brings a specialized technical expertise in Agronomy and Water management, Climate change and renewable energy, sustainable development and environmental ethics. His career is defined by his expertise in balancing humanitarian operations with natural resource management across both crisis and development contexts.

Serving with Swiss Humanitarian Aid (SDC), the ICRC, and the World Bank, Chris has led operations in over 100 countries. During his tenure with the UNHCR, he played a pivotal role in the Global Energy Project—a flagship $500 million framework—overseeing technical implementation and infrastructure strategy across 63 nations. Most recently, Chris served as a Senior Advisor to the American Geophysical Union (AGU), leading a global outreach strategy spanning 143 countries with a focus on empowering Global South institutions and developing ethical frameworks for climate interventions.

From this journey, Chris identifies a double paradox defining our era:

• The Paradox of Time: We face an immediate, collective deadline to respond to anthropogenic existential threats, yet we are simultaneously at the very infancy of our journey as a species.

• The Paradox of Direction: The "Great Accelerations" of both the OECD and the BRICS+ have depleted our planet and severed our ties to essential wisdom. To move forward, we must restore our connection with the natural world and ourselves.

Together with a large community of artists, scientists, diplomats, and youth, AwareNearth bridges this gap by blending science with empathy—moving beyond technological fixes to foster a restored planetary consciousness.