Our Story

The Global Center for Executive Leadership grew from an inter-university initiative to bring the foremost scholar-practitioners in their respective fields into a collaboration space. In 2011, our first cohort gathered faculty from institutions such as Harvard, Columbia, MIT, Cornell, Yale, Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh, INSEAD, Capetown, Ibadan, Cairo, Sorbonne, Trinity, and Complutense, and our cohorts have since included representation from more than 150 universities worldwide. Together we have paved the way for thinking, architectures, frameworks, and initiatives that all function in service of one shared objective, "establishing a global system of learning and leadership that serves people through the development and proliferation of sustainable and equitable governing practices that advance society by putting an end to long-standing crises. Our first cohort individually sought to address issues such as biodiversity loss, species extinction, the hunger crisis, water scarcity, education justice, radicalism, systemic inequity, and civil justice challenges. Today's cohorts have progressed this work by using collaborative insights, experience, and expertise to generate and implement solutions in partnership with communities and their leaders.