The Global Development Incubator

GDI-South Asia recently attended Bharat Tex 2025, New Delhi, engaging with key stakeholders shaping the future of textile circularity and sustainable finance. Senior Associate, Greeshma Hegde, spoke at the panel on "Economic Greenprints: Navigating the Financial Landscape of Sustainability." The discussion explored critical financial innovations to unlock green financing, scale investments in sustainable technologies, and leverage public-private partnerships for a more resilient and circular textile sector. We shared insights on GDI’s work to build a financing facility that mobilizes capital for India’s solid waste management sector, particularly textile waste, with a special focus on informal and grassroots enterprises—the backbone of India’s circular economy. GDI, along with KOIS and Fields of View, also joined the Laudes Foundation workshop on "India: A Global Circularity Hub - Developing and Scaling Post-Consumer Textile Waste Management." This intriguing session brought together partners across the textile circularity ecosystem to align efforts on unlocking 1 million tons of recycled fiber through investment, industry collaboration, and policy interventions for scaling post-consumer textile waste systems in India. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s address at Bharat Tex underscored the mounting impact of textile waste and called for enterprises and innovations to step up—building on India’s deep-rooted traditions of reuse and repair. There is tremendous potential to unlock financing and innovation in waste and circularity, and we look forward to collaborating to drive systemic change. A big thank you to KPMG, Karan K., Lakshmi Poti, anita chester, and IKEA Foundation for their support and partnership. To learn more, reach out to Suvranil Majumdar, Tanushri Shukla, or Greeshma Hegde. #CircularEconomy #TextileWaste #SustainableFinance #GreenInvestments #BharatTex2025 #InclusiveCircularity

GDI Africa is #hiring! Based in #Nairobi, the Senior Manager, Data and Technology will play a critical role on the Strategy and Build team. This position will act as the #Data & #Technology Portfolio Lead for GDI Africa. This role will also serve as the global data and tech lead for The Global Opportunity Youth Network (GOYN), a multi-stakeholder initiative hosted at The Aspen Institute and managed in partnership with GDI. The Senior Manager, Data and Technology will drive the development and implementation of data and technology strategies, ensuring efficient and aligned systems across our global network. Additionally, they will contribute to various GDI initiatives, leveraging their expertise to support project management, #strategy development, and relationship management. This role will help drive GDI Africa's mission and vision, leveraging their expertise to create #SocialImpact on a global scale. Learn more and apply today: https://lnkd.in/d4EDvW2w

Kenya and Germany recently signed a labor agreement targeting mutually beneficial labor mobility between the countries, which creates the potential for life-transforming employment opportunities for Kenyans at scale. Social entrepreneurs in Kenya and Germany are responding to the opportunities created by this agreement, but enabling Kenyans to access German labor markets involves expensive learning by doing before achieving a scalable and sustainable model. GDI-supported Talent Mobility Fund’s Global Track launched to help overcome this first-mover disadvantage by mobilizing resources to test and demonstrate good mobility models. GDI's Jason Wendle writes about a few highlighted initiatives as they build a pipeline: https://lnkd.in/eFZF2KiU #GlobalMobility #SocialImpact

GDI Americas is #hiring! Our team is looking to onboard a Senior Associate on our Strategy & Build team. This role is a unique opportunity to be on the founding team of startups and partnerships focused on #SocialImpact. You will work closely with social leaders, innovators, and entrepreneurs who are addressing some of the world’s biggest problems. Combining both #strategy and #implementation, this position will play a critical role in supporting GDI’s selection and development of new initiatives with the greatest potential to address persistent global challenges. Apply today: https://lnkd.in/e-EWXbFm

Kicking off 2025, GDI has one new exciting development to start our year! Our board has recently approved Andrew Stern to shift to devote his full-time capacity to the Global Coordinator role across our GDI entities. Chintan Maru, one of our leading senior Strategy and Build Directors, will be appointed to serve as CEO of the GDI Americas entity as of February 2025. Stay tuned and learn more here: https://lnkd.in/eAhuk4hv

Enabling people to move for opportunity should be an urgent priority for funders and social innovators who want to make a difference: “Migration is not a problem in search of a solution; it is a solution waiting to be unlocked by thoughtful investment of resources and effort.” GDI Managing Director Jason Wendle's article "Betting on Migration for Impact" was featured in Stanford Social Innovation Review's list of the 10 Most Popular SSIR Articles of 2024. Read the article here: https://lnkd.in/earwkdbf

This year marked a special milestone as the Global Development Incubator reached its tenth year developing solutions that catalyze 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. In our Year in Review, we reflect on our impact, how we’re addressing current and emerging challenges, and our goals for 2025. Read the full text here: https://lnkd.in/esWx2GVe

The Global Development Incubator Americas is incubating initiatives that build toward more inclusive societies. The Dignity Restoration Project (DRP) is advancing this goal in the United States, building the operating infrastructure to support a national movement toward racial repair, starting in #Detroit. Tune into a very special conversation between Ibram X. Kendi (MacArthur Fellow and author of How to Be an Anti-racist) and Bernadette Atuahene (USC Law Professor and co-founder of Dignity Restoration Project) on Jan 28 7PM ET. GDI's Chintan Maru will represent DRP. Join us and register today: https://lnkd.in/e_Ep8FUU

GDI-incubated Tabiya’s AI-powered skills-discovery tool, Compass, was recently featured in Google Cloud's New Way Now video series. 🎥 Watch how this open-source, generative AI tool tackles youth unemployment in low- and middle-income countries, empowering millions of job seekers. Plus, catch their CEO and Co-Founder Christian Meyer in the spotlight! 👉 Watch the video: https://lnkd.in/eEntw4Xh 👉 Explore Compass: https://lnkd.in/ebjxyRj6 #AIforSocialGood #SocialImpact #YouthEmployment #GoogleCloud #NewWayNow

People’s Courage International is #hiring a Director of Innovation for their new initiative, the Global Climate Resilience Collective (GCRC). This position is based in #India and will lead the innovation vertical for the GCRC. 90% of internal migrants in South and Southeast Asia are impacted by extreme weather events. GCRC works toward greater investment in social protection and adaptation of climate-affected informal workers and internal migrants across South and Southeast Asia. The team is looking for an individual experienced in #strategy development, program design, and program management, with a facilitative and open-minded leadership style. Learn more and apply today: https://lnkd.in/e7H6ujby #SocialImpactJobs