GEM Connect Overview
What is GEM Connect?
GEM Connect is a regional approach to expanding access and participation across Detroit Michigan’s advanced mobility ecosystem. Through shared learning, relationship building, and real-world engagement, it helps create clearer pathways into opportunity for people, organizations, and communities across the region.
Advanced mobility is one of the most significant economic opportunities of our generation. GEM Connect exists to make sure that opportunity is navigable – not just for those already inside the ecosystem, but for the groups and geographies that have had fewer pathways in.
GEM Connect is grounded in research, built from regional listening, and designed to create the relationship infrastructure that moves opportunity forward.
What are the core components of GEM Connect?
GEM Connect Leadership Cohort 2026
A nine-month cohort of 28 Trusted Connectors from across Detroit Michigan – representing engineering, design, K-12, higher education, community-based organizations, founders, industry support, and regional economic development.
GEM Outreach Strategy Playbook
Developed from regional listening sessions with 80+ individuals and 75+ organizations, the playbook provides a strategic framework for conducting meaningful community and regional engagement across the advanced mobility ecosystem.
Activation Workshops
Four virtual workshops that brought the playbook to life across different stakeholder groups – workforce development, innovation, business enterprise, and theregional ecosystem. Each session led with lived experience before introducing frameworks.
Ecosystem Insights & Network Analysis
A longitudinal social network analysis of Detroit Michigan’s advanced mobility ecosystem, conducted by Orange Sparkle Ball in partnership with the Detroit Regional Partnership. GEM Connect uses this research to understand where connections are missing and where to build them.
What are the overarching themes reflected in GEM Connect?
Listening first.
GEM Connect originated from regional listening sessions with cross-sector stakeholders. The playbook, the workshops, and the cohort design all emerged from what the region said it needed – not from a top-down program design.
Immersive and place-based.
The cohort’s four in-person convenings are designed to connect participants directly with the people, places, and work shaping the region’s mobility ecosystem – grounding shared learning in real context.
Relationship infrastructure.
Ecosystems aren’t built from the top down. They’re built through trust, access, and sustained connection. GEM Connect focuses on building the relationship infrastructure that allows people and organizations to find each other and move opportunities forward.
GEM Connect by the Numbers
28 Members
GEM Connect Leadership Cohort 2026 - representing 10 sectors across Detroit Michigan
80+ Voices
Individuals engaged through stakeholder interviews and listening sessions that shaped the Outreach Strategy Playbook
150 Organizations
Mapped in the 2025 GEM Social Network Analysis across Detroit Michigan's advanced mobility ecosystem
11 Counties
Detroit Michigan counties represented across GEM Connect's regional and community engagement work
4 Workshops
Activation workshops held in February 2026 across workforce, innovation, business enterprise, and regional ecosystem stakeholders
9 Months
Of shared learning, immersive experiences, and relationship building across the 2026 cohort year
How does GEM Connect support the broader GEM initiative?
- Access and Participation: Identifies and addresses gaps in who can access and participate in the advanced mobility ecosystem – across sectors, counties, and groups and geographies that have had fewer pathways in.
- Relationship Infrastructure: Builds the cross-sector connections and trusted networks that allow information, opportunity, and collaboration to flow more broadly across the region.
- Research-Informed Strategy: Applies social network analysis and community listening data to make strategic decisions about where to invest in outreach and relationship-building.
- Trusted Connectors: Develops a cohort of professionals who serve as on-ramps – helping others navigate the ecosystem and connect to careers, contracts, and partnerships.
- Regional Alignment: Engages stakeholders across all 11 counties, ensuring that the benefits of advanced mobility growth are visible and navigable across the full Detroit region.
Looking for something else?
To learn more, contact:
Jeannine Gant
Mobility Engagement Officer
Global Epicenter of Mobility