Director of Public-Private Partnerships
Partners of the Americas
Ukiah Busch is the Director of Public Private Partnerships at Partners of the Americas, where he oversees the 100,000 Strong in the Americas Innovation Fund, a public-private partnership initiative led by the U.S. State Department and Partners of the Americas, along with private sector companies, to provide seed funding for new, sustainable student exchange partnerships between higher education institutions in the U.S. and the countries of the Western Hemisphere. Through his work on the Innovation Fund, Mr. Busch has built funding partnerships with numerous multinational companies and non-U.S. government agencies, including Coca-Cola, Cementos Progreso, SENAI, SENA, MetLife, the Mary Street Jenkins Foundation, ICETEX, and Colciencias, among others.
In 2017, Mr. Busch launched Partners’ annual Higher Education Partnership conference, which offers an intimate venue for institutions to meet with their peers throughout the Americas and form new partnerships for international collaboration and exchange. Mr. Busch also led Partners’ higher education membership strategy and played a key role in building the network of more than 2,000 institutions that currently make up the 100,000 Strong in the Americas Innovation Network.
In 2011, Mr. Busch became the first recipient of the Machado “Intrapreneurial” Fellowship for his development of the PartnersCampus Student Chapter initiative, which now connects university students at institutions in 15 countries across the Americas for international service and leadership activities. Mr. Busch has presented at numerous higher education conferences, including NAFSA, HEP, FAUBAI, CCID, CONAHEC, AIEA, EducFinance, and LASA.
Mr. Busch earned bachelor’s degrees in Italian, French and Spanish from the University of Georgia and a Masters of International Relations from American University in Washington, DC.
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Wednesday, June 1, 2022
4:30 PM – 5:20 PM MDT