GDI’s 2024 Year in Review and What’s Ahead for 2025
This year marked a special milestone as the Global Development Incubator reached its tenth year developing solutions that spark sustainable and inclusive development. Curiosity has been our compass this past decade, leading us to new discoveries, perspectives, and achievements. Most importantly it has cultivated a community with incredible changemakers with whom we are proudly partnering to put transformative local ideas into action around the world.
Since our launch in 2014, our team of social impact entrepreneurs and partners has launched over 80 initiatives in areas including climate, access to healthcare and education, financial inclusion, and labor mobility, among others. Our initiatives share a similar DNA, set of values, and ambition for large-scale impact. We have leveraged over $800 million in capital to support these ventures from committed public and private donors and investors.
Community is an important focus of our work. Here are examples of community-building efforts this past year:
Moving Toward an Inclusive Society
We launched two new initiatives centered on moving toward an inclusive society that support cohesive, resilient communities. Tango, a cooperative quiz game, is bringing Americans with different political viewpoints together to reduce partisanship. The effort is based on the evidence-based research developed by Professor Joshua Greene from Harvard Psychology, which has shown sustained improvements in goodwill across divides. The Dignity Restoration Project (DRP) is building the operating infrastructure to support racial repair in the United States; the work starts in Detroit where DRP aims to compensate and restore the dignity of residents who lost their homes due to unlawful property tax assessments.
In Africa and Asia, we piloted interventions that are influencing policies and practices to support under-served communities – including families living under the poverty line, caregivers, people with disabilities, and migrant workers. Kenya’s Social Economic Inclusion Program, adopted by the Kenyan government this past year, will improve the delivery of critical safety net programs (including cash transfers and hunger prevention activities) to reach more vulnerable communities throughout the country in years to come. NurtureFirst, an initiative supporting home-based childcare (HBCC) providers has had early success putting quality standards in place in three counties in Kenya that will guide local providers to enhance their caregiving practices to promote optimal early childhood development. The Disability Impact Partners, which aims to improve access to assistive technologies (such as hearing aids, wheelchairs, and prosthetics) for patients in lower and middle-income countries, is making strides in creating partnerships between product developers and distributors and building a network of investors.
Cultivating Partnerships to Tackle Complex Challenges
Our work this past year brought together diverse research, policy, funding, and implementing partners to advance solutions to complex challenges affecting community health. In 2024, GDI partnered with Open Philanthropy to inform their global lead elimination strategy for their $100M Lead Exposure Action Fund (LEAF). Through this work, GDI is developing an actionable plan for governments, multilateral agencies, and implementing NGOs to systematically measure and mitigate lead poisoning in some of the most contaminated consumer goods at the global level and in several of the highest-burdened countries. The team engaged with USAID, The World Bank, WHO, and UNEP in advancing and collaborating with the global community to build a strategy for lead elimination. In 2025, the team is planning to propose several Discovery efforts that would inform the launch of new initiatives that will bring the strategy to life.
As part of our overall climate thesis, and with the support of the IKEA Foundation and Laudes Foundation, GDI South Asia is incubating the Circularity platform, offering support forformal and informal waste enterprises and initiatives across the value chain to ensure it reaches the hands-on implementers of waste management in India that can enhance social inclusion through improved livelihoods and entrepreneurship. This uniquely falls at the nexus of climate, entrepreneurship, livelihoods, and gender – with a particular impact on the most marginalized communities involved in the work.
Expanding Our Team
We welcomed several new members to our team in 2024 to support our growing goals including Brian Shillinglaw, a Managing Director who will lead a portfolio of initiatives focused on climate mitigation and carbon removal, and Melissa Janis who will serve as our Resource Mobilization lead. Our teams in Africa and South Asia continue to grow and expand their efforts as well. We invite you to explore our career page for new opportunities to join our team in the year ahead.
Looking Ahead
In the coming years, we aim to double our early-stage incubation efforts to tackle emerging issues – with curiosity and community, as ever, at the heart of our work. Thank you, our global network of partners, entrepreneurs, and team members, for your continued efforts and we look forward to an impactful 2025.