Americas Society/Council of the Americas

Americas Society/Council of the Americas

Americas Society was founded by David Rockefeller in 1965 and operates jointly with its sister organization, the Council of the Americas (COA). The dual entity has long served as an off-the-record venue where policymakers, investors, and heads of state navigate political and economic currents in the Western Hemisphere. Rockefeller, who chaired the board until his death in 2017, seeded the organization with an endowment now estimated at roughly $61 million (Altss estimate). Programmatic scope spans public conferences, private diplomatic roundtables, cultural exhibitions, and trade-policy advocacy. The Council of the Americas' Trade Advisory Group — composed of member corporations and invited experts — does direct advocacy for open markets and trade facilitation across the Americas. Culture is a separate but integrated track: the Americas Society runs an active visual arts program at its Park Avenue headquarters, showcasing works drawn from its permanent Latin American art collection alongside traveling exhibitions like the upcoming Lilia Carrillo show. The endowment functions as a compact institutional portfolio with sidecar commitments to buyout, direct secondary, and secondaries strategies. Parallel vehicles include the Council of the Americas corporate membership network and Young Professionals of the Americas (YPA), an initiative fielding over 1,500 members in New York, D.C., and Miami. May 2026: The organization mounted its 44th Annual Spring Party and opened a retrospective of Mexican painter Lilia Carrillo at the 680 Park Avenue space, signaling continued cultural programming scale. The distinctive architecture is the Council-Americas Society fusion: a single executive leadership layer — Susan L. Segal as President and CEO of both entities, with AES Corporation CEO Andrés Gluski as Chairman — runs a policy side that convenes sitting officials under Chatham House Rule and a cultural side that maintains a museum-caliber collection. That makes the endowment a small financial base supporting an outsized diplomatic networking asset.