GEM 2024: Breaking Barriers for Women and Girls

In 2024, CID's annual GEM conference focused on advancing gender equity worldwide by exploring pathways to enable women and girls to reach their full potential.

Prior Global Empowerment Meetings:

GEM 2023: Growing in a Green World

CID’s annual Global Empowerment Meeting was held at Harvard Kennedy School on May 10-11, 2023. GEM23: Growing in a Green World (GEM23) explored different dimensions of climate change, with a particular lens on both the challenges and opportunities emerging from developing countries. The conference brought together over 160 researchers, public policy officials, private sector leaders, civil society representatives, and philanthropists who are championing climate solutions at a global scale. 

Read more about GEM 2023.

GEM 2022: Healing in an Unequal World

On April 28th and 29th, Harvard’s Center for International Development (CID) and the Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy co-hosted CID’s flagship annual Global Empowerment Meeting (GEM22). Top business leaders, policymakers, and academics came together in this two-day in-person conference to discuss the theme, “Healing an Unequal World”. While the two days brought to stark relief the pervasive issue of inequality in each facet of humanity, they also allowed for reflection and convening towards change.

Read more about GEM 2022.

GEM 2020: Re-encountering Homo Moralis: Making Sense of a Seemingly Irrational World

Cambridge, MA – Harvard’s Center for International Development hosted its twelfth annual Global Empowerment Meeting (GEM) over the course of one virtual GEM Week September 21-25, 2020. This year's theme was “Re-encountering Homo Moralis: Making Sense of a Seemingly Irrational World.” Top business leaders, policymakers, and academics, engaged around the most cutting-edge work in international development, gathered to discuss ideas of polarization, “us and them,” and conflict.
Read more about GEM 2020.

GEM 2019: The Coevolution of State Capability and Economic 

Cambridge, MA – Harvard’s Center for International Development hosted its eleventh annual Global Empowerment Meeting (GEM) on April 9-10, 2019 at the John F. Kennedy School of Government. This year, the coevolution of state capability and a society’s economic development was at the core of the debate. Drawing on ideas from cutting-edge academic thinkers – from Francis Fukuyama and James Robinson to experienced practitioners such as Senegal’s Aminata Touré and Albania’s Arben Ahmetaj – we learned about the relevance of institutional effectiveness to a country’s economic development and discussed the challenges of achieving such effectiveness while facing complex issues on the ground.

Read more about GEM 2019.

GEM 2018: The Sense of Us, Societal Identities and Policymaking

Cambridge, MA – Harvard University's Center for International Development (CID) hosted its tenth annual Global Empowerment Meeting on April 17-18, 2018. This year, the gathering of business leaders, policymakers, development practitioners and academics explored some of the catalyzing forces that shape the way societies promote cooperation, define policy priorities and tap into global knowhow.

Drawing on fields ranging from evolutionary biology to psychology and development economics, the discussions aimed to disentangle the formation of societal identities and a sense of us, and how these forces shape policymaking. We also ventured into the tensions between diversity and social cohesion, and the challenges of migration policymaking.

Read more about GEM 2018.

GEM 2017 - The Sense of Us

Cambridge, MA – Harvard University’s Center for International Development (CID) hosted its ninth annual Global Empowerment Meeting on April 18-19, 2017. Made possible by the collaboration with the MasterCard Foundation, GEM 2017 brought together a group of 100 business leaders, development practitioners, policymakers and academics representing a multitude of disciplines and geographies. Participants had the opportunity to hear from speakers from across the globe. 

The theme of this year’s GEM, “the sense of us,” and its implications for economies and societies, emerged as an observation from CID’s research and country engagements. Through our work in different parts of the globe, we have recognized that this concept has profound implications on economic development.

Read more about GEM 2017.

GEM 2016: How Individuals & Societies Learn

Cambridge, MA – Harvard’s Center for International Development (CID) hosted its annual Global Empowerment Meeting (GEM) on April 13th and 14th, 2016. This year’s event was made possible in collaboration with the MasterCard Foundation. In its eighth year, GEM continues to feature cutting-edge research and initiatives in global development and bring together business leaders, policymakers and academics to discuss ideas that revolutionize development paradigms. This year’s theme was on learning—how individuals and societies learn and the vast socio-economic implications of this process.

Read more about GEM 2016
 

GEM 2014: A GEM with Big Ideas

Cambridge, MA—Harvard's Center for International Development (CID) hosted its seventh Global Empowerment Meeting earlier this fall. The event is CID's flagship annual event bringing together an invitation only list of select leaders and thinkers from development, government, business and philanthropy. Each year the group engages around the major development problems in the world today, and explore cutting-edge ideas to solve them.


The speeches, presentations and discussions wove a compelling story about the world today, in particular the inequalities in livelihoods and social equality brought about by technology and digitization, and the globalization of problems without globalizing solutions. If there was a theme tying the different sessions together, it was inter-dependence: of the challenges we face, of the knowledge and skills we must develop, and of the new ethical, business, policy, and development models we need.

Read more about GEM 2014.

GEM 2013: Trillion Dollar Ideas to Build Prosperity

The theme for the Global Empowerment Meeting 2013 was Trillion Dollar Ideas to Build Prosperity. The goal was to examine transformational shifts in our strategies for creating prosperity that are poised to revolutionize economies and empower the global poor.

The sixth in the Global Empowerment Meeting series, GEM13 brought together 100 senior policy makers, business leaders, development experts and academics to continue last year's productive discussion on new strategies for accelerating growth and unlocking the potential of developing countries.

Read more about GEM 2013.

GEM 2012: Trillion Dollar Ideas to Build Prosperity

Our goal at CID is to come up with big ideas that will have an impact on eradicating poverty - specifically policies that will spur growth in countries, facilitate the effective delivery of human and social services, and help government agencies execute effectively.

GEM12, the fifth in the Global Empowerment Meeting series, brought together experts from a broad range of disciplines, such as neuroscience, network science and behavioral economics to discuss ways these fields can help us answer development questions.

Read more about GEM 2012.

GEM 2011 - Trillion Dollar Ideas to Build Prosperity

The fourth in the GEM series, GEM 2011 brought together one hundred senior policy makers, business leaders, development experts and academics to continue last year’s productive discussion on new strategies for accelerating growth and unlocking the potential of developing countries.

Read more about GEM 2011.

GEM 2010 

The discussion explored innovative ways to facilitate diversification, unleash entrepreneurial talent, and improve access to markets for individuals and companies in the developing world. The conversation included the role of the public sector, both as a facilitator of private sector development and as a direct provider of services to foster growth and empowerment.

GEM 2009

More than 50 top entrepreneurs, scholars, nonprofit leaders, government officials, and other thought leaders convened September 16-17, 2009, at the John F. Kennedy School at Harvard University for the second annual Global Empowerment Meeting hosted by The Empowerment Lab at the Center for International Development (CID). Established with a seed grant from the MPOWER Foundation, The Empowerment Lab focuses on research to promote economic inclusion, finding sustainable ways to empower the global poor by providing access to markets.

The agenda focused on opportunities and challenges for financial empowerment in developing countries, with the goal of extending markets and financial services to more than two billion people who are currently unbanked or under-served. Technology and regulation were key themes for this year's event, as well as a discussion on the effects of the financial crisis.

Read more about GEM 2009

GEM 2008 - Importance of Partnering with the Private Sector

Academics from Harvard and Yale discussed the importance of partnering with private sector firms to test research questions in many contexts. Harvard Business School's Nava Ashraf discussed her latest partnership with a large Salvadoran bank to study how offering US-based migrants from El Salvador the opportunity to control what the remittances they send are used for. Harvard Business School's Shawn Cole is partnering with banks in India to offer farmers weather insurance. Yale's Dean Karlan discussed several studies that demonstrate the importance of framing and marketing in producing products that appeal to underserved markets, and Harvard Kennedy School's Asim Khwaja discussed his use of psychometric testing to identify promising entrepreneurs in South Africa.

Read more about GEM 2008.