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Global Mayors Academy
empowering city leaders to succeed
accredited
STARTS ON
January 24, 2026
DURATION
6 - 7 months
Online Learning
Offline Practical Experiences
In-person event in Switzerland
PROGRAM FEE
£6000
£1200 Early Enrolment Discount ends 31 October 2025
ELIGIBILITY
5+ years of relevant work experience
and/or the passion and agency to help transform your city.
SAVE £1,200
TUITION FEE NOW
If you enrol by 31 October, 2025
£4,800
£6,000
Setting a new standard for city leadership
The Global Mayors Academy (GMA) - a flagship project of Living Cities Earth is a transformational, practice-oriented leadership program for visionary mayors and civic innovators who are ready to move from simply managing challenges to intentionally shaping the future.

It helps leaders earn meaningful global recognition, respected credibility and the trusted influence needed to shape conversations that matter, deepen their leadership capacity, and craft integrated, actionable strategies for the sustainable and regenerative transformation of their cities.

Guided by exceptional teachers, world-class experts and successful mayors with support from a global peer community of city leaders, participants engage in real-world projects, shared learning, and collective innovation - cultivating the integral mindset, confidence and practical tools needed to lead their cities wisely in a complex and rapidly changing world.
"Around the world, cities are growing in size and importance, and mayors are leading the charge in addressing the most pressing issues we face, from creating jobs to fighting climate change."
108th mayor of NYC and founder of Bloomberg LP and Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative
Michael R. Bloomberg
Cities are facing complex challenges
Social
Demographic
Economic
Ecological
Cultural
Cities around the world are facing mounting pressures - from rising living costs, growing inequality, and strained social cohesion, to rapid population shifts, climate migration, overstretched infrastructure, declining public trust, and accelerating technological change.

These deeply interconnected disruptions are stretching local systems and demanding investment in future-ready skills, next-generation infrastructure that is circular, zero-emission, and fit for purpose - and a dynamic form of leadership that is inclusive, accountable, responsive, and grounded in integrity.

GMA helps city leaders like you respond to these realities - not by offering one-size-fits-all solutions, but by supporting you to realise the outcomes that matter most to your context and calling. Whether it's building trusted influence, unlocking critical funding, activating your citizens as partners, or designing future-ready strategies, GMA equips you to move from firefighting to future-shaping.

Through an integrated, practice-based journey rooted in applied learning, real-world projects, and a trusted global community, city leaders expand their capacity to lead with wisdom, courage, and deep collaboration — across their own personal development, their teams, their city, and the systems that sustain life within it.
6B
people, 68% of world's population will live in cities by 2050
UN REPORT
24%
of the world's population lives in slums

UN STATS
10,000
major cities and 500,000
municipalities worldwide

OECD/UCLG
75%
carbon emissions & 60–80% energy consumption are from cities
UN PUBLICATION
GMA faculty and experts already support city leaders and changemakers in 700+ cities in 50 countries globally
1B
people worldwide are living with a mental health disorders
2024 WHO REPORT
80%
of cities lack funds for basic needs

WORLD BANK
61%
of citizens globally distrust government and business

EDELMAN TRUST BAROMETER
$5T
urban infrastructure investment needs per year through 2030
UN ASSESMENT
"We want to bring people together, moderate and motivate. In the end, it's about self-realization, about implementing your ideas and making a difference"
City President, Lichtensteig (Switzerland)
Mathias Müller
Who is this programme for

The GMA is for those who carry the weight of leadership - people shaping the places where life happens. Leaders who know that guiding a community today demands more than technical skill or political will.
You might be leading a city, town, island, or community - anywhere people come together to live, work, and build meaningful lives. You hold real responsibility, and you feel both the pressure and potential that come with it. You’re not satisfied with surface-level change. You care about outcomes that are lived, felt, and sustained - and you’re ready to deepen your leadership and expand your impact.

Participants typically include:

  • mayors and future mayors, members of city councils and senior city officials
  • entrepreneurs, urban developers, and ecosystem builders uniting sectors toward shared goals
  • leaders from local communities and impact projects, members of NGO's and active citizens
  • leaders of key urban systems - health, education, environment, housing, and infrastructure
  • strategists and practitioners who turn data and trends into actionable solutions
  • leaders of universities and knowledge institutions shaping the next generation of city leaders
Whether you join as an individual or as part of a city leadership team, the Academy offers tested tools, integral perspectives, and a trusted global network - to lead with deeper agency, broader capacity, and meaningful, lasting impact.
What Makes GMA Unique

Lead Your City by Learning to Lead Yourself
Most programs start with policy or infrastructure. We start with you - helping you grow the clarity, courage, and multiple intelligences needed to lead wisely in complexity.

Implement Real Projects for Real Impact
Apply what you learn directly to your city through hands-on projects that deliver visible, tangible change where it matters most.

Leverage Your Leadership Growth to Transform Your City
Move from insight and personal development to collective action - through a learning arc designed to help you lead deep, lasting change across your teams, communities, and city systems.

Learn Locally, Connect Globally
Join a diverse global network of peers and experts - gaining tools grounded in cutting-edge knowledge, real-world practice, and aligned with global goals for city transformation.
Key Outcomes
  • Earn a Swiss Professional Cerificate
    Gain global recognition for your leadership.
    Earn an internationally accredited credential in strategic, ethical, and regenerative city leadership — a mark of distinction that sets you apart as a leader shaping the cities of the future.
  • Nurture Personal Fulfilment & Well Being
    Lead with clarity, courage, and grounded purpose.
    Develop the confidence, balance, and multiple intelligences to sustain high performance — so you can meet complex challenges with authenticity, energy, and wisdom.
  • Rebrand Yourself & Your City
    Be an outstanding brand that can be trusted.
    Learn to strategically reposition yourself as a trusted, credible leader, capable of leading your city to become a beacon of regenerative innovation. A living lab — attracting global attention, investment, & partnership opportunities.
  • Gain Access to Real-World Tested Tools
    Work with what’s proven to work.
    Gain access to field-tested frameworks and actionable strategies — from zero-emission infrastructure to citizen engagement — that you can apply immediately in your context.
  • Engage in Immediate Implementation & Impact
    Turn ideas into visible results — fast.
    Design and deliver a tangible, high-impact project during the programme, creating measurable change in your community and a story of success you can stand behind and build upon.
  • Access Innovative Funding Strategies
    Unlock new resources and accelerate your city’s progress.
    Learn how to access creative, place-based, and free or affordable funding — from public–private partnerships to impact-driven finance — to fuel your city’s most ambitious projects.
  • Learn How to Activate & Engage Your Citizens
    Lead a city that leads with its people.
    Discover practical models for inclusive governance that empower citizens as co-creators — strengthening trust, cohesion, and shared responsibility.

  • Create an Integral City Development Strategy
    Shape your city’s long-term future with confidence.
    Co-create a robust, systems-based development strategy aligned with global sustainability goals — grounded in your local reality and designed to last.
  • Join a Global Network of Trusted Peers
    Join the world’s most forward-thinking city leaders.
    Build lifelong connections with mayors, civic innovators, and sector pioneers united by a shared mission: transforming cities through integrity, intelligence, and collaboration.
"‘Instead of letting your hardships and failures discourage or exhaust you, let them inspire you. Let them make you even hungrier to succeed."
Former First Lady - United States of America
Michelle O Bama
Explore the GMA curriculum

The 7 steps of the GMA flagship journey offer a systemic approach to transformational city leadership.

Blending online learning, real-world projects, and immersive in-person experiences—including the Swiss Leadership Camp—it supports you to grow your leadership within yourself and your city.

This is more than a curriculum. It’s proven strategies to help you succeed in what matters most to you!




The 7 steps of the GMA curriculum, explores a rich range of topics

essential to your success as a leader.


Through a combination of core modules and electives that cover diverse focus areas, the journey offers a dynamic learning experience—one that is both practical and developmental, equipping you with real-world tools while also deepening your personal and leadership growth.

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The GMA learning experience
helps you achieve what matters most to you
whole-system learning
Benefit from a 360-degree learning journey that integrates personal growth, global insight, and place-based practice to equip you for transformative leadership in today’s complex urban environments.
world class expert faculty
Learn from internationally recognised educators, researchers, and practitioners who bring decades of experience, practical wisdom, and a passion for engaging, real-world teaching.
live online sessions
Join bi-weekly live sessions with faculty, guest speakers, and break-out rooms — blending teaching, dialogue, and peer exchange with dynamic voices in city innovation and leadership.

self-paced & place-based learning
Balance flexibility and depth with a weekly commitment of 3–5 hours, designed to immerse you in the realities of your own city.
on-the-ground practice
Step beyond the classroom with guided tasks & real-world challenges - face-to-face with the people, ecosystems, & urgent issues shaping your place.
actionable tools & frameworks
Explore tested strategies and innovative tools designed to help you tackle complex challenges, align stakeholders & drive sustainable infrastructure development.
Case studies
Gain insight from real-life city transformations — from climate adaptation and circular economies to participatory planning and youth engagement.
in-person learning
Connect deeply during a 4-day gathering in Switzerland in 2026, where you’ll experience on-the-ground learning, global perspectives, and an unforgettable celebration of shared purpose.
tailored electives
Choose from a range of focused electives to tailor the programme to your needs, diving deeper into areas that match your current priorities.
advanced coaching
For those seeking personalized growth, add-on coaching sessions offer deeper integration of your leadership journey, challenges, and potential.
peer collaboration

Participate in hands-on workshops and collaborative spaces outside the core sessions, where peer learning and city-specific strategy design take center stage.

pathways to further education
Build on your learning with access to master’s-level degree opportunities and a wide ecosystem of courses aligned with regenerative, systemic urban leadership.
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"We are, by nature, explorers, born to learn—it has always been our most ancient and essential dance with existence itself. It is not the act of learning that is new to us. What is new, and perhaps our greatest challenge, is learning how to truly human well, in alignment with the flows of life."
CEO of Living Cities Earth &
Co-founder of GMA
Ferial Puren
Real-world application

Lead a WowYourCity! Project from Day 1

Lead 1 or more real-world projects that create visible impact in your city—while you learn.


Choose from 6 powerful project options during Orientation, get step-by-step frameworks, global peer support, and expert guidance all the way.

You’re encouraged to invite your city teams and colleagues to join you in the project work.

This part of the journey is designed to include them—and help build their skills too.


We’ve studied the best executive education programmes out there—and then raised the bar.

This is next-level, experiential learning where leadership doesn’t stop at ideas—it starts with impact.

It empowers and transforms you, your teams and your city.

"Switzerland has 4 languages, many cultures. People from 160 nations live in Bern... They make Bern great, again and again, every single day"
Mayor of Bern, Switzerland (2017-2024)
Alec von Graffenried
Attend an In-person networking & learning experience in Switzerland
Our programme concludes with a transformative 4-day in-person gathering in Switzerland - a powerful convergence of learning, connection, and global collaboration.

Participants will build lasting relationships with peers from around the world and gain first-hand insight from world-renowned experts and city leaders driving systemic change.

The experience includes site visits to Geneva, Bern, Zurich and Lichtensteig - cities at the forefront of transformative, social & environmental innovation and citizen activation.

The journey concludes with a meaningful graduation ceremony in one of Europe’s oldest City Halls, in the historic town of Lichtensteig - marking the start of a renewed commitment to lead change in one’s own place.
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The faculty of the GMA is it's soul
Our faculty are the living thread that brings depth, brilliance, creativity, and real-world practice into every aspect of the learning experience. This rare constellation of educators, practitioners, facilitators, and coaches spans leading institutions and universities as well as hands-on roles in communities, governments, research institutes, and civic organisations.

Intentionally curated to reflect diversity across cultures, disciplines, geographies, and worldviews, our faculty embodies the belief that global learning demands global perspectives. Through place-based insights and lived experience from cities, towns, and communities across every continent, they help equip participants with the wisdom, courage, and creativity to lead wisely in a complex, rapidly changing world.

What Inspired the Global Mayors Academy
Harvard-inspired. Swiss-made. UN-certified. Powered by integral approach of Living Cities Earth.
Global Mayors Academy is designed to empower your success and the success of your city.

Founded by accomplished graduates of Harvard School of Government and Harvard Business School and other leaders from the world’s preeminent institutions and some of the world’s best organised cities.
We asked: “How could city leaders worldwide receive Harvard-level education… or better?” This question became our guiding light as we designed the world’s best program for city leaders - combining Harvard approach to leadership education with practical tools & insights from the world’s best cities, mayors and city leaders from Europe, Africa, Americas and Asia”
Lev Gordon
Harvard Business School, Global Business Leadership Program ’08, Columbia Executive MBA ‘04, co-founder of Living Cities Earth & Global Mayors Academy, member of Harvard Club
It began with a bold vision—led by Lev Gordon and a global team of changemakers—who came together to reimagine leadership education for mayors and city leaders worldwide. Drawing on decades of experience in governance, community-building, and integral development, they set out to create a programme that goes beyond theory—rooted in real cities, real results, and real leadership growth.

The result is the Global Mayors Academy (GMA)—a standout among hundreds of executive education programmes. Designed to empower your journey as a city leader and changemaker, GMA brings together some of the world’s leading experts in leadership, community, and city development.

Today, you can join the GMA Flagship City Leadership Programme. And in 2026, we launch the world’s first, 15-month Masters degree programmes with Integral Leadership Practices at the heart:
  • Master of City Administration (MCA)
  • Master of City Development (MCD)
These degrees are designed to equip leaders in cities around the world, with the tools, wisdom and knowledge required to meet the future of urban life—where integral, systemic leadership is not optional, but essential.

GMA is powered by a world-class faculty from Living Cities Earth—the world’s largest network of experts in integral development, headquartered in Switzerland, the world’s #1 best overall country.

With a growing portfolio of Executive Education offerings, The Global Mayors Academy mission is clear:

To inspire, interconnect, and empower one million leaders in cities worldwide to create a meaningful life for themselves, a better future for their cities, and greater wellbeing for the people they serve.

Here's how we stack up against similar programmes
Who is Living Cities Earth
The team behind the GMA - Living Cities Earth is the world’s #1 integral city development community with more than 150 co-founders - leading experts and change-makers from 30 countries and 5 continents. LCE Association is a Swiss-registered nonprofit organisation creating positive impact in 100+ countries.

With 1000+ research publications and 2000+ years of combined experience in leadership, organisational and city development, LCE experts provided inspiration, advice and practical tools to thousands of city leaders and change-makers in 700+ cities in more than 100 countries. 

Many LCE co-founders themselves were leading remarkable city development projects and full-scale city transformations that are now part of GMA curriculum and materials. 

| LCE vision is simple: 10.000 living cities, 1 living planet.

LCE mission is to inspire, interconnect and empower 1 million leaders of positive change in 10.000 cities to create future where people live happy healthy lives in harmony with nature.
Achieving Global Excellence
We are committed to ensuring that the Global Mayors Academy meets the highest standards of excellence in leadership development and city transformation. This programme has been developed in alignment with the accreditation requirements of the following institutions.

The GMA is accredited by the Global Accreditation Council (GAC) — dedicated to accrediting quality learning for a better world.

We have also started the process of accreditation with the University of Wales Trinity Saint David (UWTSD) — designating this activity for Category 1 Credit(s)™ towards higher education pathways in Integral Leadership, City Administration, and Urban Development as well as UNITAR (United Nations Institute for Training and Research) — supporting learning for sustainable development and global governance.
Earn an International Swiss Certificate in Integral City Leadership
At no additional cost, upon completion of this program, you will receive a digital Certificate of Completion from The Global Mayors Academy in partnership with UWTSD and UNITAR.

Reach out to an advisor if you need to clarify anything that may still be unclear. We are here to help.

Connect with a program advisor for a 1:1 session

Email: connect@globalmayors.academy
APPLY NOW
SAVE £1,200
TUITION FEE NOW
If you enrol by October 31, 2025
£4,800
£6,000