How Dylan Welch Helps Organizations Navigate the UN System

Dylan Welch is the founder and CEO of Welch International, an international relations and strategic advisory firm based in St. Petersburg, Florida. He also works as a private contractor for the United Nations. This feature in our leadership series looks at how Dylan Welch and Welch International help organizations engage the UN and the wider multilateral system.

Who is Dylan Welch, and what is his connection to the United Nations?

Dylan Welch works as a private contractor for the United Nations. He is an expert in business development, strategic partnerships and communication strategy, and those skills sit at the center of his advisory practice.

His background shows how he came to this work. His earlier career includes broadcast production and UN-adjacent foundation operations, and he co-founded and exited a green media company. He also spent about a decade as an international expedition guide, leading expeditions across Europe, South America and Asia, and he has organized philanthropic expeditions internationally.

Today 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 also founded Intelligence Report and hosts The Intelligence Report Podcast. For more on that platform, see How Dylan Welch Built Intelligence Report for International Affairs.

What does Welch International do for UN and multilateral engagement?

Welch International specializes in business development, strategic partnerships and operations across the public sector, the private sector and the multilateral system. Its focus areas include public-private partnerships, market entry and expansion, United Nations and multilateral engagement, government relations, sustainable development, and convenings and delegations.

The firm organizes its work into three services. Each one matters for UN engagement in a different way:

• 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, cross-border operating models and high-level convenings.

The Partner service is the most direct route into the UN system. Our earlier feature on how Develop, Partner, Operate serves four sectors covers the full model.

Welch International 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.

How did the New York Innovation Forum bring these pieces together?

Dylan Welch is the founder and host of the Global Leadership Forum. Its 2026 edition, the New York Innovation Forum for Sustainable Development, took place on September 21 and 22, 2026, at 777 UN Plaza in New York. It was timed to Climate Week NYC and the 81st UN General Assembly. Peace Boat US, which holds ECOSOC Special Consultative Status, and Welch International co-hosted it.

Partners and sponsors included Siemens, the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, RMI, the Roosevelt Alliance, Blue Planet Alliance, HNO International and the Global Leadership Network. The programming included a Business and Innovation Forum, a Nature Conservation Forum for a Renewable Energy Future and a Climate Week Family Office Forum.

The forum shows what the Operate service does in practice. A convening that puts corporate, philanthropic and civil society participants in the same room as the multilateral calendar is the kind of high-level event the firm builds.

Why does UN engagement matter for organizations right now?

Several UN-linked events this month show how closely the multilateral system and the private sector are tied together. These developments come from UN sources. Dylan Welch and Welch International are not described as taking part in them.

According to the UN in Türkiye, COP31 will be hosted by Türkiye in Antalya from 9 to 20 November 2026. A Private Sector Consultation Series ahead of the summit brings together businesses, UN entities and the wider business community. It is meant to feed private sector recommendations into the climate agenda. For the finance backdrop, see our report on the Adaptation Gap Report.

The UN Economic Commission for Europe also lists its tenth session of the Working Party on Public-Private Partnerships for 23 and 24 November at the Palais des Nations in Geneva. Its public-private partnership work aims to build governments’ expertise in identifying, negotiating, managing and implementing PPP projects.

The pattern is that UN processes increasingly expect structured participation from companies, foundations and governments together. Entering that system without clear introductions, a defined partnership model or an operating plan can be slow. This is the gap Welch International says it exists to close, by helping clients build partnerships, pipelines and operations that produce measurable results. The UN also moves through formal votes and procedure, as our coverage of the General Assembly vote on ICC sanctions shows.

Work with Welch International

If your government, company, institution or foundation is weighing how to engage the UN or multilateral institutions, Dylan Welch and Welch International offer a confidential 30 minute consultation. Book a confidential 30 minute consultation here, or visit welchinternational.org to learn more about the firm.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

• Welch International
• On the Road to COP31: Business Community meets for climate action
• Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) for the SDGs, UNECE
• Working Party on Public-Private Partnerships (23-24 November 2026), Indico.UN

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