Following a successful experience with the On Think Tanks (OTT) School for Thinktankers, CGS has spent the past year building connections with think tanks by increasing engagement with thought leaders at OTT’s annual conference. The OTT Annual Conference in June 2025 was held at The Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS - the business school for the University of Pretoria), in Illovo, Johannesburg, South Africa, and focused on the impact of the work and influence of think tanks. Practitioners, policymakers, and academics attended compelling workshops and sessions that highlighted challenges and proposed solutions to pressing issues in the sector, including exploring strategic ways to communicate research findings to the public and to build stronger coalitions and partnerships. The opening keynote speech, delivered by Mavis Owusu-Gyamfi, President and CEO of the African Center for Economic Transformation, delivered an important takeaway that reinforced the learning outcomes of CGS’ Master of Science in Global Studies (MSGS).
Ms. Owusu-Gyamfi discussed the need for new models of coalition-building that bridge research, analysis, and policy, and engage audiences with impactful, evidence-based storytelling. Emphasizing that “no one is going to read your 200-page report”, she explained that think tanks must first hook their readers through shorter, targeted communications that inspire deeper dives. That process of engaging your audience can start with a riveting tweet about findings, leading to a thoughtful blog post or a persuasive policy brief, which will point readers to the full report on which these shorter pieces are based. She underscored the critical need for analysts with adaptable writing skills – the capacity to conduct rigorous research and write high-quality reports, as well as the ability to distill those reports into smaller pieces, laser-focused on the audience and messaging, such as executive summaries and policy briefs. That statement resonated strongly, as during the pandemic, I redesigned the final assignment for Global Society (GLBL 500) from a paper to a policy brief to help students learn to reframe their research to achieve policy goals. Global Studies encourages students to apply global perspectives to global problems that impact policy. Because policy briefs are concise, evidence-based documents that persuade target audiences of the need for specific actions to address a problem, using a policy brief as an assignment more directly connects these goals to learning outcomes. Ms. Owusu-Gyamfi’s statement provided helpful validation that the assignment redesign was a step in the right direction toward linking learning outcomes to the skill development required by think tanks, government institutions, and industry.
The May 2026 On Think Tanks (OTT) conference was held in partnership with the Policy Center for the New South (PCNS) in Rabat, Morocco. The conference convened think tank leaders, researchers, academics, and policy experts from around the world to collaborate, exchange knowledge and innovate solutions in an environment “shaped by artificial intelligence, declining trust in expertise, political polarization, and increasing financial pressures” (PCNS). Topics included:
• Trust and legitimacy in policy research
• Artificial intelligence and the future of expertise
• Strategic communication and narrative-building
• Organizational culture and institutional resilience
• The role of universities, youth, and emerging policy actors
I had the pleasure and privilege of co-presenting a panel on the role of universities titled “Universities and Think Tanks: Strategic Alliances for Knowledge, Impact, and Sustainability” with Karim El Aynaoui, Executive President, Policy Center for the New South, and Florencia Rubiolo, Director, Insight21, Universidad Siglo 21.
The session examined the parallel pressures think tanks and universities face: think tanks must diversify funding and demonstrate policy relevance, while universities are pushed to show real-world impact beyond academia. Together with our participants, we explored whether deeper collaboration between universities and think tanks could offer a credible and sustainable path forward. Drawing on different institutional models, from academically anchored research centers to more autonomous hybrid structures, the discussion focused on the benefits and trade-offs of these partnerships. Universities can contribute credibility, intellectual diversity, and relative funding stability, while think tanks bring agility, policy relevance, and knowledge translation; yet, overcoming barriers to productive collaboration, such as differences in governance structures and responsiveness, is challenging. Leading the group in a participatory activity, we worked to identify practical models that balanced excellence, relevance, sustainability, and trust in policy research and minimized barriers to collaboration.
Keynote speeches and other sessions also generated important insights that are valuable to our students, faculty, and community. Keynote speaker and R Street Institute Executive Director Erica Schoder reflected during her talk that “all the knowledge we need is in this room”, referencing not just the collective knowledge, experience, and insight of the participants present, but more importantly, the knowledge that we would co-create through dialogue, creative exploration, and networking. Erica noted, “the knowledge needed for today’s challenges does not fully exist yet. It is created through interaction itself — in moments of disagreement, critique, negotiation, and collective problem-solving”. In an era of AI and ever-present questions about the relevance of humans in knowledge generation, this revelation was less an encouragement and more a call to action. Her speech was an inspirational way to kick off the conference and a critical reminder of the importance of human agency in policy creation, implementation, and evaluation. The article summarizing her talk and a video of the presentation are available here.
Also helpful was the keynote speech from Héctor Cárdenas, President and CEO of the Ergo Group, who gave a talk titled “If we don’t tell the story, others will: Think tanks in a polarized world”, which explored the confluence of trust, evidence, and storytelling in policymaking. What was particularly compelling to learn was the shift in the amount of time think tanks spend on research and communications. Participant John Schwartz, CEO of Soapbox, remarked that in the past, think tanks would spend the majority of their time on research and less on comms, but that equation has now flipped, and that communications now require more strategic effort and time. That perspective was helpful in thinking about 21st-century skills required by employers – that the ability to reach an audience and persuade someone of the importance of your research is just as important as the knowledge required to do the research itself. As CGS further develops courses and certificates for the MSGS, embedding these skills in learning outcomes will benefit our students and our program. The article summarizing his talk and a video of the presentation are available here.
CGS looks forward to building stronger relationships with think tank partners and working on collaborative projects, and will continue to amplify the voices of our colleagues at OTT, member think tanks, and other institutions engaged in policymaking.
