Leadership & Focus Of Global Development International

Henry E. Cole is Founder and President of Global Development International 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.

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

Experience and Perspective

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

He previously served for 25 years as an executive and President of The Futures Group International and its subsidiaries, where he helped establish the company’s international development policy, planning, and assistance programs and helped grow it into a global leader in forecasting, planning, and policy analytics. Subsidiaries included Futures Health Corps and Futures North Star Medical. The non-profit  Futures Institute of International Development focused on humanitarian  concerns.  Corporate offices included Washington, Glastonbury, Raleigh-Durham, and Bath, England. Clients included Ford in Dearborn and Ford Europe’s think tank in Bath, as well as Shell Canada, Shell International, and major governmental and institutional programs in countries including Great Britain, Australia, France, Japan, and China.

Country program offices were located in over 50 countries and were supported by international and country agencies including United Nations bodies, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, OECD-related centers, and numerous bilateral assistance agencies, as well as U.S. departments and agencies including Energy, Labor, Interior, Commerce, EPA, HHS, USAID, CDC, NIH, and the Census Bureau.

Mr. Cole’s earlier experience includes leadership positions with GE’s Center for Advanced Studies (TEMPO), where he managed international socioeconomic and demographic policy analytics programs and established economic and demographic modeling and projection programs for institutions in Africa and the Middle East. For GE energy programs, he also led teams in economic and social analysis for nuclear nonproliferation and energy assessment programs in Egypt, Turkey, and Peru. 

Later, at Hittman Nuclear Associates, he served as Senior Economist for U.S. domestic energy programs, modeling residential and commercial energy supply and demand for the Department of Energy.

His economics background also includes internship and consulting work with the President’s Council of Economic Advisers; faculty of economics at Tulane University; and lecturing and education in socioeconomic modeling, forecasting, and policy applications for organizations including the OECD,  International Labor Organization, UNDP, the French National Institute for Demographic Studies, the Asian Development Bank, the African Development Bank, American University in Beirut, and Hacettepe University in Turkey.

Boards and Governance

Mr. Cole currently serves on selected corporate and institutional boards, including The Millennium Project, where he was a founder in the early 1990s and which now has futurist nodes in 72 countries for foresight analytics and national and institutional guidance, including leadership and advisory roles concerning the risks and urgently needed governance of AGI.

For 11 years, until mid-2026, he served on the board of the medical real estate REIT CHIRON (NYSE: XRN) and its predecessor, Global Medical REIT (NYSE: GMRE), where he was Lead Independent Director and served as Chair of the Compensation Committee for 8 years, a member of the Audit Committee for 10 years, Chair of ESG, and a member of the Nominations and Governance Committees.

Until recently, he also served on the corporate board of the proteomics cancer-treatment diagnostics company Avant Diagnostics, later Theralink, and now Ignite Proteomics, where he continues in supporting roles. His work in both enterprise development and population welfare in the United States and overseas has included founding and leadership roles, many continuing, in more than 15 companies and institutions and on numerous nonprofit boards spanning energy, digital and medical technologies, healthcare systems, maternal-child health, mental health and disabilities, immunoassay and PCR diagnostics and treatments, bio-defense, safe and adequate blood supply, and international development policy and planning.

Education and International Background

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

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