About Global Development International

Leadership & Focus

Henry E. Cole is Founder and President of Global Development International (GDI) and leads GDI Future, the firm’s foresight and strategy platform. His work focuses on long-range systems analysis, enterprise strategy, and decision support across global health, economics, technology,  energy and international development.

Henry's primary professional activity centers on building, advising, and governing multiple enterprises and new initiatives operating across complex international markets and spanning health systems, medical diagnostics, medical infrastructure, bio-security, technological change, policy assessment, planning, and demographic-socio-economic transformation.

Experience & Perspective

Over a more than five-decade career, Mr. Cole has founded, led, and scaled numerous companies and institutions with operations and offices in more than 50 countries with over 3,000 international and local professional staff.

He previously served for 25 years as an Executive and President of The Futures Group International and its subsidiaries, where he helped develop the company into a global leader in forecasting, planning, and policy analytics. Corporate US offices were in Washington, Glastonbury, and Raleigh-Durham and in Bath, England;  Corporate clients included Ford as Futurist Advisor in Dearborn and Ford Europe's Think Tank in Bath; other corporate programs including those for Shell Canada and Shell International;  and government level programs in over fifteen countries including Great Britain,  Australia, and France,Japan and China. International agencies clients included The United Nations General Assembly, UNDP, UNESCO, UNWHO,  UNFAO, World Bank and Asian Development Ban OECD   and for the US  agencies domestically and overseas, including The US  Departments of Energy, Labor, Interior and Commerce, Environmental Protection, and Health and Human Services,  and Agencies such as the Agency for International Development, Center for Disease Control, National Institutes of Health, and Census Bureau.

Mr. Cole's  experience includes leadership positions with GE’s Center for Advanced Studies (TEMPO. There he managed the  international socioeconomic and demographic policy analytics programs, including work in for 15 countries and  where he also established the economic and demographic modeling and projection programs  for institutions in Africa and the Middle East 

For Energy programs at TEMPO he also lead  teams for economic and social analysis for nuclear nonproliferation and energy assessment programs in Egypt, Turkey and Peru. and  three countries. Later at Hittman Nuclear Associates he served as Senior Economist  for US domestic energy programs, modeling residential and commercial energy supply and demand  for the US Department of Energy.    

Mr. Cole Cole's economics background includes an an internship appointment and  consulting to the President's Council of Economic Advisors; faculty  of Economics at Tulane University; and lecturer  and educator in socioeconomic modelling, forecasting and policy applications for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), The International Labor Organization, the UN Development Program, the French National Institute for Demographic Studies,  the Asian Development Bank, African Development Bank and Hacettepe University in Turkey.   

Mr. Cole currently serves on selected corporate and institutional boards, including: The Millennium Project, where he was a founder and which now has  futurist nodes in 72 countries for foresight analytics and national and institutional guidance, including leadership in the risks and critically needed governance of  AGI (Artificial Global/General Intelligence); and withthe medical real estate REIT,  CHIRON (XRN), and its predecessor, Global Medical REIT  (GMRE), for eleven years,  where he serves as Lead of the Independent Board and Chair of the Compensation Committee for 8, Member of the Audit Committee for 10, Chair of ESG  and Member of the Nominations and  Governance Committees. +

Until recently on the corporate board of the proteomics  cancer treatment diagnostics company, Avant Diagnostics (now TheraLink and Ignite). His work with corporate and many non profit boards and senior executive roles span energy, digital and and medical technologies, health care systems and maternal-child health, mental health and disabilities,  immuno assay and PCR diagnostics and treatments, bio-defense, safe and adequate blood supply, energy, and international development policy and planning .

Henry holds degrees from Yale University and The Johns Hopkins University, with training in economics, mathematics, and political economy. He has lived and worked extensively across Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, including numerous developing and  emerging market countries. He speaks and has lectured in French. 

.