GMF’s second BUILD (Bilbao Urban Innovation Leadership Dialogues) conference took place from September 16-18, 2015 in Bilbao, Spain. The BUILD program inspires participants to maximize opportunities for transatlantic peer-to-peer learning and networking. BUILD has a strategic focus on two key themes that are critical to building and leading the cities of tomorrow:

• Leading equitable and sustainable urban transformation initiatives
• Developing leaders and civic ecosystems to support a city’s global engagement 

The theme of global engagement featured across the conference, with participants breaking into workshops on both days to work with the Transatlantic Leadership Initiatives (TLI) team’s original curriculum on “Leading Towards Greater Global Engagement.” GMF’s global engagement leadership curriculum trains leaders in how to leverage 8 assets essential for global engagement across cities, states, and regions:  business and labor; NGOs; K-12 Education; higher education; elected leadership; social and civic inclusion; arts and culture; and media.

On Day 1, Participants distilled lessons that will allow them to address a specific problem related to global engagement in their city. On Day 2, participants turned to the question of elected leadership.  During BUILD 2014, participants reported that the need to influence political leadership to place global engagement at the center of their city’s agenda posed one of their greatest challenges to innovation. Participants therefore workshopped cross-sector strategies for developing global engagement capacity among policy makers, with the goal of arriving at practical strategies to increase the global connectivity of their cities and regions.

The TLI team also presented leadership development training on the topics of “Leveraging your Leadership Strengths,” using the Strengthsfinder tool in an innovative transatlantic format, and partnered with the Silicon Valley based innovation capacity-building firm Smallify to deliver a design-thinking workshop that contributed directly to policy issues faced by the city of Bilbao. To read more about the BUILD conference, click here.