Leadership

Developing Leaders, Driving Impact

Leadership isn’t just a title—it’s a practice. At the Aspen Institute, we connect and develop leaders across sectors, geographies, and generations, building a community of individuals committed to addressing the world’s greatest challenges. Through dialogue, reflection, and shared learning, we cultivate the skills, relationships, and perspectives leaders need to navigate complexity, foster trust, and create meaningful, lasting change.

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Aspen Institute Leadership Seminars

Aspen Institute Leadership Seminars provide a transformative space for reflection, dialogue, and growth, equipping leaders with the insights and skills to navigate complexity.

Ideas in Leadership

Explore bold ideas, diverse perspectives, and timeless lessons on leadership from across the Aspen Institute.

How Higher Ed is Tackling Climate Change

This is Planet Ed‘s Higher Ed Climate Action Plan is a roadmap to support comprehensive climate action across higher education with recommendations for different stakeholders to catalyze and scale these efforts around the country.

Women and Girls are a Critical Climate Solution

At Aspen Ideas: Climate 2024, women leaders came together to discuss the burden of climate change on women and girls—particularly in securing resources like food and water—and how their innovation and ingenuity can be major contributors to climate solutions.

Navigating The Rural Green Economy

As we envision a green economy for the future, what are the concerns of rural residents? The Aspen Institute Community Strategies Group shares some essential lessons for the green economy of the future coming out of rural communities across America.

Five Big Ideas from Aspen Ideas: Climate 2024

The ideas discussed at Aspen Ideas: Climate in Miami Beach make evident that if climate challenges are plentiful, so are creative solutions, and we can hold these ideas at the same time and choose optimism, with a dash of realism.

Upcoming Events

Through immersive seminars, dynamic discussions, and cross-sector convenings, we create spaces for reflection, dialogue, and action. These gatherings challenge assumptions, foster meaningful connections, and support leaders in navigating an ever-changing world. Explore our upcoming events.

2025 Aspen Security Forum

July 15 – 18, 2025 | Aspen, CO

Feeling the Heat: Workplace Safety in a Warming World

For the benefit of workers, businesses, and our society, we need to build workplace heat safety into our culture, policies, and practices if we are to adapt to our warming planet. Join the Aspen Institute Economic Opportunities Program on Wednesday, July 30, at 1:30 p.m. Eastern time, on Zoom to learn about how the warming climate is affecting workers, and what policymakers, businesses, and labor are doing to keep workers safe. This event is part of EOP’s Opportunity in America conversation series.

Aspen Institute Leadership Experiences, Designed for Your Organization

Aspen Institute Custom Leadership Seminars offer tailored experiences that foster reflection, dialogue, and growth. Designed for organizations and teams, these seminars cultivate purpose-driven leadership, trust, and collaboration, equipping participants with the mindset and skills to navigate complexity and drive meaningful impact.

Latest in Leadership

Leadership is about action, not just position. Explore how Aspen cultivates leaders who think deeply, act boldly, and collaborate across differences to solve complex challenges. Learn more.

What started as a soup giveaway became a movement of neighbors gathering to cook and eat in Olympia, WA. Photo credit: Chris Hyde
Blog Posts

Weaving from scratch – with soup

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Blog Posts

What We Learned About AI, Power, and Possibility

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Blog Posts Videos

Breaking News, Breaking Barriers: Connie Chung on Journalism, Truth, and Legacy

Featuring Connie Chung, pioneering journalist, Emmy-winning news anchor, and the first woman to co-anchor the CBS “Evening News.”

2025 Resnick Aspen Action Forum

July 22nd – 25th, 2025

Leadership Redefined

Now more than ever, the path to meaningful, durable change lies in proximity — in being deeply rooted in the communities we serve, and committed to walking alongside them. This means moving beyond surface-level solutions, beyond reactive cycles, and toward a model of leadership grounded in deep relationships, trust, and shared purpose.

How to Tell Governments What You Think

Learn how to tell government actors what you think about their ideas in this 1-hour webinar.

September 24th, 2025 9-10am

Flash Seminar: Rooting Our Leadership in Humanity – August 2025

Get a glimpse into what the Aspen method of text-based dialogue can do to strengthen the connection between your leadership and your values

August 27th, 2025 4:30-5:30pm

Writing a Public Comment

Learn a framework for writing effective public comments in this 1-hour webinar.

September 10th, 2025 11am-12pm

Leadership for Large-Scale Change

On May 1–2, 2025, the Aspen Institute and the Higher Ambition Leadership Alliance convened 100 experienced practitioners — nonprofit and foundation leaders, former government administrators, CEOs, and scholars — to discuss “Leadership for Large-Scale Change.”

AI governance requires trustworthy, values-driven leadership

What does values-driven leadership look like in the world of artificial intelligence (AI)? And what responsibilities do AI consumers have?

AI x Power Action Roundtable at the 2024 Action Forum

Values in Action: How the Medal of Honor Center is Redefining Leadership Development

The National Medal of Honor Center for Leadership is transforming how we understand and teach values-based leadership. In this Behind the Impact interview, we speak with Joe Waring (Liberty Fellow) who serves on the Center’s board, and Dr. Justin Habash, the Center’s Senior Vice President of Leadership Programs and Chief Learning Officer. Together, they share insights on how Medal of Honor values translate to everyday leadership decisions, the power of moral courage, and why this approach to leadership development is especially relevant in today’s rapidly changing world.

Joe Waring and Justin Habash

If factions are a feature — not a bug — of a society, creative conflict helps us design new ways forward.

How do we listen even when we are the most hurt? How do we disagree without disappearing?

At the Resnick Aspen Action Forum, changemakers explored what it means — and what it takes — to stay at the table during the most difficult moments. This conversation turns toward clues in history, reminding us that the institutions of today were once the result of creative innovation.

Taking inspiration from youth and the artistic community as sources of “research and development,” this conversation invites us to wrestle with tension rather than treating conflict as failure, allowing us to remain in relationship through our differences. Whether operating in small towns in a single U.S. state like South Carolina, or across multiple nations in the Middle East, panelists discussed the conditions that we can create in ourselves and in our communities to design new ways forward.

Conflict and Civil Discourse Action Roundtable