How Dylan Welch Builds Business Pipelines Across Sectors

Dylan Welch is the founder and CEO of Welch International, an international relations and strategic advisory firm based in St. Petersburg, Florida. He is also a private contractor for the United Nations and an expert in business development, strategic partnerships and communication strategy. This feature, part of Intelligence Report’s leadership series, looks at how Dylan Welch approaches business development: opening the right doors, mapping stakeholders and building pipelines that cross sectors.

What does Welch International do in business development?

Welch International specializes in business development, strategic partnerships and operations across the public sector, the private sector and the multilateral system. Its work is organized into three services.

• Develop: business development, including mapping markets and stakeholders, securing decision-maker introductions and shaping pipelines.
• Partner: designing public-private alliances, building coalitions and guiding engagement with the UN system.
• Operate: standing up programs, building cross-border operating models and running high-level convenings.

The sequence matters. Mapping comes before introductions, and introductions come before a pipeline can be shaped. Welch International treats business development as a disciplined process rather than a one-off meeting. Its focus areas reflect that: public-private partnerships, market entry and expansion, United Nations and multilateral engagement, government relations, sustainable development, and convenings and delegations.

The firm serves governments, corporations, multilateral institutions (including UN entities), and nonprofits and foundations. Its stated principles are trusted access, cross-sector fluency, discretion, execution and senior attention. Dylan Welch is directly involved in every mandate. Readers who want the UN side of the practice in more detail can read How Dylan Welch Helps Organizations Navigate the UN System.

Why do pipelines and partnerships matter in the multilateral system now?

The wider policy conversation is moving toward the same vocabulary. On September 21, 2026, the UN Private Sector Forum concluded at UN Headquarters in New York. Business, government and UN leaders called for stronger public-private cooperation to speed clean energy investment, according to the release issued afterward. The UN Global Compact’s chief executive said that capital and ambition alone are not enough, and that partnerships and financing structures are needed to move investment into the real economy.

Two days later, a high-level UN event convened by Morocco and UNDP focused on mobilizing public-private partnerships for development. Its stated aim was to show pipeline-to-transaction approaches that can move from concept to financial close. UNDP describes itself as a trusted broker between sovereigns and private investors. These events were organized by others, and nothing here suggests Dylan Welch or Welch International took part in them. They do show where institutional attention sits: on the practical link between a good idea, the right counterpart and a funded pipeline.

That link is where business development earns its place. A sustainability goal does not become a project until someone identifies the stakeholders, reaches the decision-makers and sequences the commitments. This is the territory Welch International describes as its own.

Dylan Welch also works on the convening side. As founder and host of the Global Leadership Forum, he led its 2026 edition, the New York Innovation Forum for Sustainable Development. It was held September 21 and 22, 2026, at 777 UN Plaza, timed to Climate Week NYC and the 81st UN General Assembly. Peace Boat US, which holds ECOSOC Special Consultative Status, co-hosted it with Welch International. Partners and sponsors included Siemens, the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, RMI, the Roosevelt Alliance, Blue Planet Alliance, HNO International and the Global Leadership Network. Programming included a Business and Innovation Forum, a Nature Conservation Forum for a Renewable Energy Future and a Climate Week Family Office Forum. For more on the event, see Dylan Welch at UN Plaza: What a UNGA Week Convening Makes Possible.

How does Dylan Welch’s background shape his approach?

The record points to a practitioner who has worked on several sides of the partnership table. Dylan Welch is co-founder of the Global Leadership Network and Chief Development Officer of the Roosevelt Alliance, a land and nature conservation policy organization. He is the founder of Intelligence Report and host of The Intelligence Report Podcast. His background also includes broadcast production and UN-adjacent foundation operations, and he co-founded and exited a green media company.

Before that, he spent about a decade as an international expedition guide, leading expeditions across Europe, South America and Asia, and he has organized philanthropic expeditions internationally. That is an editorial observation rather than a claim from the firm, but the pattern is clear. Coordinating people across borders, languages and institutions is a consistent thread in his career, and it is the same discipline that stakeholder mapping and cross-border operating models require.

His communication strategy expertise also bears on business development. Introductions and partnerships tend to move when each party understands what the other needs, and framing that clearly is a communications task as much as a commercial one. Welch International pairs it with discretion, which matters when governments, companies and multilateral institutions are in the same conversation.

Taken together, the Develop, Partner and Operate services describe a full arc. The firm maps who matters, secures access to them, builds the alliance and then helps stand up the operation that delivers results. Its own summary of the goal is to help clients build partnerships, pipelines and operations that turn shared goals into measurable results.

Work with Welch International

Organizations weighing a market entry, a public-private alliance or deeper engagement with the UN system can speak directly with Dylan Welch. To discuss your objectives, book a confidential 30 minute consultation with Welch International. The firm’s work is also described at welchinternational.org.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

• Welch International
• UN Private Sector Forum calls for faster public-private action to deliver a clean, just and secure energy future
• Financing the Future: Mobilizing Public-Private Partnerships for Development
• High-Level Side Event on Financing the Future: Partnerships between public and private actors to invest in development
• Welch International

Intelligence Report is published by Welch International. This article is part of our series on the leadership behind the publication.

This article was produced by the Intelligence Report Desk. Sources are linked below.