The F20 team is delighted to announce that Dr. Natasha Matic, Executive Director of the Accountability Accelerator, has recently assumed the role of the Chair of the Foundations Platform 20 Steering Group. Dr. Matic will represent the United States in the Steering Group as the country is taking over the G20 Presidency in 2026, helping to ensure a smooth transition from the South African presidency to the US’s. As the US prepares to host the 2026 G20, its priorities are focused on driving global economic growth, reducing regulatory burdens, strengthening affordable and secure energy supply chains, and fostering technological innovation. This shift in G20 priorities will be reflected in F20’s work throughout 2026 and beyond, to ensure that everything we do strengthens our advocacy goals and underlines our mission and vision at F20.
Dr. Matic is a global strategist with more than 25 years of experience shaping philanthropy, sustainability, and economic transformation across the Middle East, Europe, Africa, and the United States. She is the founding Executive Director of the Accountability Accelerator, an international initiative driving corporate accountability for nature and people. She has been engaged with F20 from a very early stage – after an initial meeting with its founders during the German G20 presidency in Hamburg in 2017 she continued to stay closely connected, compelled by the network’s activities and strategic outlook.
As part of F20’s Troika system, she is very much looking forward to building on the continuity, stability, and strategic coherence established by previous Chairs. For F20 this structure significantly enhances both the quality and impact of the work. Given that the G20 deals with multi-year challenges, including climate, finance, nature, and food systems, a single-year chairpersonship would too short to build meaningful progress. When the Troika is led by women and rooted in Global South leadership, the impact is amplified in several distinctive ways—politically, diplomatically, and substantively.
Dr. Matic hopes the G20 will focus less on new declarations and more on delivering credibility, particularly on climate, nature, and the resilience of communities and economies. With pressures mounting on food systems, supply chains, and financing for both mitigation and adaptation, she anticipates a stronger push for implementation pathways that are measurable, nature-positive, and aligned with real-economy transitions.
She notes, “for philanthropy, this is a critical moment – I expect the G20 will increasingly look to foundations to help bridge data gaps, strengthen accountability systems, support community-led solutions, and catalyse investment where public and private actors are not yet moving fast enough.”
The F20 Steering Group
In 2025, the F20 Steering Group was chaired by Raisa Cole (Democracy Works Foundation), representing South Africa, and was co-chaired by Maria Netto (Instituto Clima e Sociedade), who represented Brazil. This setup mirrors the G20’s Troika model, ensuring continuous collaboration and knowledge transfer across successive presidencies. An all-women leadership Troika which champions various perspectives from all over the global majority “ensures continuity, long term initiatives and results and ensures that technical knowledge, insights and learnings are passed on,” according to Dr. Natasha Matic.
This perspective is echoed by co-chair Raisa Cole, who adds, “I am especially delighted that, with Dr. Natasha Matic, the F20 Troika is now chaired by a woman whose exceptional leadership is widely recognised, in particular her talent for bringing together diverse stakeholders, guiding multicultural teams with clarity and empathy, and fostering alignment across regions and sectors.”
2026 G20 Presidency
With the US Presidency of the G20, the rotation of presidencies is entering into a new cycle and returning to the Global North, after having been led by Global South G20 presidencies in the past four years. The US leadership has made it abundantly clear that they will endeavour to return to the roots of the G20’s existence, focusing on economic growth and prosperity. With the G20 being a global forum for discussion and dialogue, this must remain a space to discuss issues that are pertinent to ensuring that the “values of innovation, entrepreneurship, and perseverance” as outlined by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in a recent op-ed are applicable to all people and the planet.
Dr. Matic’s ambition is to help position philanthropy as a strategic force for implementation, integrity, and inclusion during this pivotal US G20 presidency. It is a moment to demonstrate that climate, nature, and people outcomes are inseparable from economic stability. Despite US federal government’s different priorities, there are forward-thinking voices in the US, especially within the philanthropic circles and within state and local contexts that must be supported and engaged with. Her goal is to engage with foundations around a coherent agenda that accelerates real-economy action, centres frontline communities, and ensures philanthropy is not just funding projects, but shaping the enabling conditions for a fair, credible, and nature-positive global transition.
F20’s Recommendations will be refreshed under Dr. Matic’s chairpersonship, updating the argumentation and the action points with the results of South Africa’s G20 presidency as well as the outcomes of the Brazilian COP30. To ensure a continuation of our successful work in 2025, we will be bolstering the Recommendations for 2026 with practical examples from our network to keep up the momentum around key conversations on topics such as just energy transitions, climate finance and the reform of the international financial architecture, sustainable development and intersectionality, sustainable agriculture, food security and locally led country platforms.
F20’s Secretary General Katrin Harvey is thrilled with the appointment of Dr. Matic as the F20 Chair for 2026. She said, “F20 will benefit immensely from Dr. Matic’s leadership, as well as her remarkable expertise and experience in the global philanthropy space. We look forward to working closely with her to advance collective action and build consensus that drives the innovation required to achieve our shared goals around climate action and the 2030 agenda. Our objectives are grounded in shared responsibility, mutual self-interest, and a clear recognition that our challenges are deeply interconnected.”
We’re proud to welcome Dr. Natasha Matic as the 2026 Chair of our Steering Group and are looking forward to the many ways her unique insights will enrich our upcoming work. The first Steering Group meeting with Natasha Matic as Chair took place on 10 December 2025. To follow the important work our Steering Group contributes to, we invite you to connect with them on LinkedIn.
Chair:
Dr. Natasha Matic (Accountability Accelerator)
Co-chairs:
Raisa Cole (Democracy Works Foundation)
UK (tbc)
Secretary General: