Frequently Asked Questions

The Global Mayors Academy (GMA) is a leadership development initiative for mayors, city officials, and civic leaders working in small and mid-sized cities — typically with populations between one thousand and five hundred thousand. Our flagship offer is the City Leaders Program, a seven-month hybrid program that combines online learning, real-world city projects, peer cohort work, and an optional in-person immersive experience.

We were founded by a team of senior practitioners, alumni of Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Business School, and leaders from internationally recognised institutions and cities. Our design intent is simple: take what works in the world's best executive education and make it relevant, accessible, and useful for the cities that need it most.

GMA is a program of Living Cities Earth, a Swiss charitable association (Verein, registered in Switzerland). Distribution and customer-facing operations are administered through the GMA team in the United Kingdom. This dual structure allows us to combine Swiss values of neutrality, quality, and long-term stewardship with the operational agility needed to deliver a global program.

Yes. The City Leaders Program is accredited by the Global Accreditation Council (GAC), which recognises high-quality learning that contributes to bettering the world. We are also working with the United Nations Global Leadership and ESG Program (UNGLEP) to support learning for sustainable development and global governance, and we are in formal review with the University of Wales Trinity Saint David (UWTSD) for credit-bearing pathways toward postgraduate qualifications in integral leadership and city governance.

We will update this page as additional accreditations are confirmed.

We asked a simple question: how could city leaders around the world receive an education of the calibre of Harvard's executive programs — or better — designed for the realities of small and mid-sized cities? The answer, after careful study of the world's leading executive education at Harvard, Stanford, Oxford, IMD, and Columbia, was a program that preserves what works and goes further where it matters most: integrating inner leadership development, real-world city projects, and a whole-systems approach.

The result is the City Leaders Program — Harvard-inspired in rigour, Swiss-certified in credentials, globally connected, and locally applied.

Living Cities Earth (LCE) is a global community of practitioners, researchers, and city leaders working towards a future where ten thousand living cities thrive on a living planet. LCE's mission is to inspire, connect, and empower one million leaders of positive change in cities around the world.

GMA is the educational arm of this work. Many LCE co-founders are themselves senior practitioners whose lived experience of city transformation now informs the GMA curriculum.

The Founding Cohort officially launches on Saturday, 25 July 2026, with a free, public introduction event one month before. Live sessions run bi-weekly thereafter. Subsequent cohorts will be announced as the program grows.

The City Leaders Program runs for approximately seven months, with twelve bi-weekly live sessions, ongoing project work between sessions, and an optional in-person immersive experience at the end. There is also a deliberate pause built into the schedule for reflection and integration during the international holiday period.

Live sessions take place on Saturdays from 15:00 to 18:00 UTC, twice a month. We chose this rhythm carefully so participants across regions can attend without disrupting weekday civic responsibilities. All sessions are recorded and made available for asynchronous access, so participants in distant time zones, or those with conflicting commitments, can engage with the material at a time that works for them.

The program is built around six core modules and six elective modules. Core modules establish the foundations of integral, regenerative city leadership. Electives let you tailor the journey to your context — whether that is climate resilience, citizen engagement, public finance, digital transformation, or another priority for your city. The curriculum is sequenced as a developmental arc, designed to trigger real shifts in mindset and practice rather than to deliver content for content's sake.

WOW★YOUR★CITY! is the signature applied-learning project at the heart of the program. Each participant identifies a real challenge or opportunity in their own city and works on it throughout the seven months with the support of faculty, peers, and project mentors. It is the bridge between learning and doing, and the artefact you take away is not a certificate alone — it is a tangible piece of work that has begun to change something where you live.

The faculty are senior practitioners, scholars, and city leaders from across the globe. They include former mayors, urban planners, integral-leadership educators, sustainability experts, and systems thinkers — many of whom have led city transformations themselves and now distil those lessons for the next generation of leaders. A full faculty list is published as we confirm contributors for each cohort.

Participants who complete the program receive a Swiss-certified digital certificate of completion in Integral Urban Leadership from the Global Mayors Academy. As accreditation partnerships with UNGLEP and UWTSD are confirmed, certificates will reflect those endorsements, with credit-bearing pathways toward postgraduate qualifications becoming available.

Beyond the certificate, you receive access to an alumni community of city leaders, ongoing pathways for further learning, and a network of peers and mentors who continue to support each other after the program ends.

Yes — there is an optional in-person immersive experience at the close of the program, hosted in either Switzerland or the Western Cape of South Africa. These five-day journeys combine peer learning, exposure to local civic innovations, and reflective time in nature. They are deliberately designed to honour the wisdom of both the global North and the global South.

The immersive experience carries a separate fee that covers in-country accommodation, meals, program activities, and local travel. International travel to and from the destination is the participant's own responsibility.

Yes. All live sessions are recorded and made available to enrolled participants for asynchronous access. We recognise that mayors and senior officials often have unmovable obligations, and the recordings are part of how we make the program genuinely workable for busy people.

The City Leaders Program is designed for people who carry responsibility for a place — whether that is a city, a town, an island, or a community. Specifically, this includes:

• Mayors and their teams
• Members of city councils
• Senior municipal officials and advisors
• Urban planners and infrastructure innovators
• Sustainability and resilience strategists
• Ecosystem builders working across sectors
• Civic-society and NGO leaders
• Emerging civic leaders under the age of thirty

You do not need to hold elected office. You need to be carrying real responsibility for shaping the future of a place, and you need to want to lead with greater wisdom, courage, and impact.

We look for at least five years of relevant experience, or the demonstrated passion and initiative to transform your city. Both pathways are valid, and we read applications carefully to understand context — formal seniority is not the only signal we value.

You apply through the application form on globalmayors.academy. The form takes about ten minutes and asks for your contact details, role, city, and a short statement of motivation. After you apply, we typically follow up within a few working days to schedule a brief conversation with a program advisor before confirming your place.

Your application is reviewed by our admissions team. If your application is strong and the program is a fit, you will be invited to a short conversation with a program advisor to discuss your goals and answer any questions. After that, you will be invited to confirm your place and complete payment.

If we feel the program is not the right fit, we will tell you honestly — and where useful, we will suggest alternative pathways. Where a fee has been paid, it is refunded in full.

Yes — we encourage it. Teams of three or more from the same city, ministry, or organisation can apply together, and we work with you on group arrangements. Cities that send teams tend to get more out of the program, because the learning and the city projects gain critical mass when more than one person is engaged.

The program is currently delivered in English. We are exploring localised pathways for future cohorts, especially in markets where English-only delivery would be a barrier. If language is a concern for you, please write to us at contact@globalmayors.academy — we want to know.

The fee for the Founding Cohort is £6,000. This price reflects the full value of the program, including all seven months of live sessions, faculty interaction, the WOW★YOUR★CITY! project, peer cohort work, and the Swiss-certified digital certificate. Founding Cohort members also receive enhanced access to faculty and shape the program's evolution as it grows.

The program fee includes the full seven-month City Leaders Program: live sessions, recordings, all core and elective modules, faculty interaction, peer cohort work, the WOW★YOUR★CITY! project, the digital certificate of completion, and access to the alumni community after graduation.

The optional in-person immersive experience at the end of the program is a separate fee, which covers accommodation, meals, in-country travel, and program activities at the destination.

Part of how we keep the program accessible to leaders from regions with significant economic constraints is by using fees from full-paying participants to subsidise scholarship and equity-discount places. When you pay full tuition, you are not only paying for your own seat — you are extending a seat to a leader from a city that needs it. This is part of who we are, and we say so plainly.

Yes. We offer a small number of equity-based discounts for leaders from regions where economic conditions create real barriers to access, and a Young Leaders pathway for emerging civic leaders under thirty. These are awarded by application and are limited in number.

We also offer affiliate-partner discount codes for participants referred by our partner network. We do not advertise discount amounts publicly — please reach out to a program advisor to discuss eligibility.

Payment is processed through our checkout, which supports both card payments (via Stripe) and PayPal. Payments are accepted in pounds sterling. If your city, organisation, or institution will be paying on your behalf, institutional invoicing is available — please contact us at contact@globalmayors.academy and we will set this up.

Yes — we offer a two-part payment option (split across registration and the start of the program), and instalment plans by arrangement for participants on equity discounts. Please contact a program advisor to confirm terms.

If you are a consumer in the United Kingdom or European Union, you have a statutory right to cancel your registration within 14 days of purchase, without giving a reason, and receive a full refund — provided the program has not yet started and you have not requested early access.

After the 14-day cancellation period, or once the program has commenced (whichever is earlier), the program fee is non-refundable. We may, at our discretion, consider partial refunds or deferrals to a future cohort in cases of serious illness, bereavement, or other exceptional circumstances supported by reasonable evidence.

If we cancel the program before it begins, all fees are refunded in full. Full terms are set out in our Terms and Conditions.

Yes. We support institutional invoicing for cities, ministries, and organisations sponsoring participants. Please contact us with your purchase order details or institutional finance requirements, and we will issue the appropriate invoice and accept the appropriate payment route.

The GMA Ambassador program allows individuals and organisations in our wider network to share the City Leaders Program with leaders they know, earn commission for participants who enrol through their referral, and play a direct part in growing the GMA community.

You earn in two ways: by introducing participants to the program directly, and by inviting others into your ambassador network whose own referrals also generate commission for you across multiple tiers.

Our standard ambassador/affiliate program has three tiers:

• Tier 1 — Direct Seller (21%): When you bring a participant into the program directly, you receive 21% of the program fee — £1,260 at the current price.
• Tier 2 — Recruiter of Seller (9%): When someone you invited into the ambassador network refers a participant, you receive 9% — £540.
• Tier 3 — Recruiter of Tier 2 (5%): When someone two levels deep in your network refers a participant, you receive 5% — £300.

A performance uplift applies once your extended network reaches 25 confirmed sales, increasing total available commission to 40 per cent.

Yes. We also offer two other pathways:

• Direct Ambassador (flat 40%): For independent partners with strong direct access to potential participants who do not wish to recruit a sub-network. Commission is a flat 40% on confirmed enrolments, with no tier sharing.
• Professional Marketing Ambassador: For execution-led partners managing their own marketing operations under a custom partner agreement.

We do not offer commission-based affiliate roles to sitting public officials. We have an Ambassador pathway for mayors and other public officeholders who want to support the program in their networks. Ambassadors receive complimentary access to the City Leaders Program (a value of £6,000), public recognition as a program ambassador, and the opportunity to shape regional cohorts — without any commission element that could create conflicts of interest with their public role.

Once a participant you have referred completes payment and the cancellation window has passed, your commission becomes due. Commission is paid via PayPal Payouts, after you submit an invoice to our finance team. The cancellation window exists to ensure that commission is paid only on confirmed, non-refunded enrolments.

Ambassador registration is handled through our partner platform. If you have been referred by an existing ambassador, please use their referral link when registering — this is essential to ensure your tier attribution is correct. Once registered, you receive access to the ambassador dashboard, marketing assets, your unique referral link, and onboarding support.

To start the conversation, write to us at contact@globalmayors.academy and we will route you to the right team member.

You receive a practical guide, a marketing toolkit (email templates, social-post templates, video assets), access to centrally delivered value-first webinars you can invite people to, and direct support from a member of the GMA team. You do not need to operate alone — successful conversion is a shared effort.

No. Affiliate, ambassador, and partner relationships are governed by separate written agreements between you and GMA. Those agreements set out commission structures, payment terms, and conduct expectations in detail. Please request the full agreement when you begin onboarding.

Live sessions are scheduled in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), Saturdays from 15:00 to 18:00. This was chosen to balance accessibility across regions — it is afternoon in Africa and Europe, morning in the Americas, and evening across Asia. Recordings are available for any session you cannot attend live.

A reliable internet connection, a device with a working camera and microphone (laptop, desktop, or tablet), and a browser that supports our learning platform. We will send full technical setup instructions before the cohort begins. We do not require any specialist software.

Plan for approximately three to five hours per week across live sessions, recorded materials, peer work, and city-project work. Time investment increases modestly during integration weeks and the WOW★YOUR★CITY! project sprints. Many participants find the program demanding but workable alongside their professional responsibilities — partly because the work is directly applied to their own city, not abstract assignments.

We process personal data in accordance with our Privacy Notice. We do not sell personal data, and we do not share it with third parties beyond what is necessary to deliver the program (for example, our payment processors and the learning platform). You can contact us at any time to access, correct, or delete your data.

Your project work, contributions, and any presentations you make during the program remain your intellectual property. By participating, you grant us permission to reference your work in our marketing, alumni communications, and reporting to partners and accreditation bodies — always with appropriate credit. You can withdraw permission for future use at any time. Confidential conversations within the cohort stay within the cohort.

Please write to us at contact@globalmayors.academy and a member of our team will get back to you. If your question is about the program itself, we will arrange a short conversation with a program advisor. If your question is about partnership, finance, or accreditation, we will route you to the appropriate team member.