G. Harry Pouder was born in 1896 in Baltimore, Maryland, the son of Mr. and Mrs. George Harry Pouder, Sr. He graduated from Baltimore City College and during World War I served in France at the base hospital near Bordeaux. After the war he returned to Baltimore and worked as a reporter for The Baltimore Sun and with an import-export house before joining the board of trade in 1920.

As a Board of Trade worker, Pouder wrote several articles for The Sun on United States ports and their relation to the port of Baltimore. In July 1926, he was named director of the Import and Export Bureau of the Association of Commerce. Less than four years later he was named Executive Vice-President of the organization.

Pouder was involved in shipping, commerce, and ports (particularly the Port of Baltimore), for most of his life. He pushed for the 1928 Rivers and Harbors Bill, which contained provisions for the construction of a deep-water anchorage in Baltimore, and from 1934 to 1959 opposed the St. Lawrence Seaway project, fearing that it would injure Baltimore's business. During World War II, Pouder served as Baltimore City Committee chairman for the Fifth War Loan campaign, chairman of the Emergency Port Committee of Baltimore, chairman of the commerce and industry section of the Baltimore Council for Civilian Defense, chief of the information section of the Baltimore Civilian Mobilization Committee, vice-chairman of the Maryland Wartime Transportation Committee, and member of the Baltimore Aviation Commission. Pouder retired from the Association of Commerce in 1961.

Pouder received his undergraduate degree from Johns Hopkins University in 1926 in English Literature and Archeology. Drama was one of his lifelong interests; he wrote several small plays in addition to writing on drama for The Sun and was also president of both the Charcoal Club and the Vagabonds, the country's oldest theater group. He was also associated with the Homewood Playshop, now known as Theatre Hopkins. He edited Baltimore magazine from 1949-1964. In 1976 his bequest to Johns Hopkins University established "a permanent endowment fund for the purpose of providing and annual lecture on the drama or on any form of English or American literature."

Pouder's first wife, Elizabeth Cabel Nolan, whom he married on October 6, 1928, died in 1956. Pouder married his second wife, Joanna Douglass Coulter in 1957. Pouder died July 7, 1971.