Henry E. Cole

Founder of Global Development International. Economist, strategist, futurist, entrepreneur, and corporate director. Helping organizations and institutions navigate transformative change.

Professional Focus

Henry E. Cole is Founder and President of Global Development International (GDI) and leads GDI Future, its foresight and strategic initiatives platform.

His work focuses on strategic foresight, systems analysis, enterprise development, governance, and decision support across healthcare, economics, emerging technologies, energy, and international development.

Throughout his career, Mr. Cole has worked at the intersection of public policy, enterprise, and institutional development, helping organizations understand long-term change and translate strategy and foresight into practical implementation.

His experience spans economic, energy, and health systems, medical diagnostics, healthcare infrastructure, biosafety, technological innovation, demographic and socio-economic analysis, and, more recently, the governance of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).

Experience & Leadership

Mr. Cole has founded, helped establish, led, governed, and advised numerous companies, institutions, and international studies and initiatives operating across more than eighty countries and supported by over 3,000 international and local professional and administrative staff.

The Futures Group International. He served for twenty-five years as an Executive and President of The Futures Group International (now The Palladium Group) and its subsidiaries, where he helped build the organization's international policy, planning, forecasting, and development programs into one of the leading organizations in strategic planning, policy analytics, international development, and technology assessment.

Corporate offices were located in Washington, D.C.; Glastonbury, Connecticut; Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina; and Bath, England.

Corporate and institutional clients included Ford Motor Company, Ford Europe, Shell Canada, Shell International, Coca Cola, Spalding, Rand, Battelle, Total, Gallup, and many others together with government, institutional, and private-sector organizations throughout North America, Europe, Asia, and in Australia, Great Britain, Mexico, and France.

Country program offices operated in more than fifty countries with support from international and national agencies including the United Nations, UNDP, UNESCO, WHO, FAO, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, OECD, bilateral development agencies, and numerous United States departments and agencies, including Energy, Labor, Interior, Commerce, Health and Human Services, USAID, CDC, NIH, and the Census Bureau.

GE's Center for Advanced Studies (TEMPO). Mr. Cole directed international socio-economic, demographic, and policy analysis programs involving more than fifteen countries in Africa and the Middle East. For these he led development  of economic, socioeconomic and demographic modeling and projection programs supporting national institutions in sectoral policy analysis and training for in-country technical  assistance programs. 

 He also led analytical teams examining economic and socioeconomic aspects of nuclear non-proliferation, national energy assessments, energy technologies, and energy policy in Egypt, Turkey, and Peru. 

Economics Programs Later, as an energy economist with Hittman Associates and Hittman Nuclear, he directed energy economics analysis and systems modeling for United States Department of Energy programs involving national and regional residential and commercial energy supply and demand.

Mr. Cole's economics background includes service with the President's Council of Economic Advisers, the faculty of economics at Tulane University, and professional lectures and training in socio-economic modeling, forecasting, planning, and policy applications for OECD, the International Labor Organization, UNDP, the French National Institute for Demographic Studies, the Asian Development Bank, the African Development Bank, American University of Beirut, Hacettepe University, and other national and international institutions.

Institutions, Boards, and Companies

The Millennium Project.   Mr. Cole serves on selected corporate and institutional boards, particularly The Millennium Project https://www.millennium-project.org . As President of The Futures Group, he participated in founding The Millennium Project during the early 1990s. He continues to serve as Director on its Board of Directors, supporting global program direction, futurist analytical studies, and advisory activities.

The Millennium Project is a global network of and for futurists, with Nodes in over 78 countries. At the global, regional, and country levels, The Millennium Project  addresses the broad scope of interests, methodologies, and timeframes for long-term foresight and strategic studies and scenarios, and provides guidance and advisory support for international organizations and for national and private institutions.

Mr. Cole's current focus includes the practical, institutional, corporate, and international governance of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). He works to distinguish the governance requirements of today's AI systems from those of emerging AGI and to encourage more urgent international attention to risks associated with increasingly capable and autonomous systems.

Medical Facilities and Technologies. For eleven years, through mid-2026, Mr. Cole served on the Board of CHIRON (NYSE: XRN) and its predecessor Global Medical REIT (NYSE: GMRE), including service as Lead Independent Director and Chair of the Compensation Committee, member of the Audit Committee for ten years, Chair of ESG, and member of the Nominating and Governance Committee.

He also served on the Board of Avant Diagnostics (AVDX, later Theralink, subsequently Ignite Proteomics), and he continues advisory and governance roles supporting advances in precision cancer treatment diagnostics and technologies.

He has also founded, governed, invested in, or supported development of more than fifteen additional companies and six nonprofit organizations spanning healthcare systems, diagnostics, biotechnology, blood safety, and medical technologies and treatments. Many of these organizations also involved  integration and support for  energy systems, international development assistance, maternal and child health, mental health, education planning, disability services, and strategic foresight.

Education & International Perspective

Mr. Cole holds degrees from Yale University and The Johns Hopkins University, with studies in economics, mathematics, political economy, and a background in physics.

He has lived and worked extensively throughout Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Europe, in both developed and emerging regions. He speaks French and has lectured internationally in the language.

In addition to corporate management and oversight responsibilities in numerous countries, Mr. Cole's longer-term engagements within developing and emerging economies have included Egypt, Turkey, Jordan, Cameroon, Ghana, Senegal, the countries of Sahelian Africa, the Philippines, Indonesia, and the Caribbean, particularly Haiti. 

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