Our Mission
By being part of the Aspen Global Leadership Network, Fellows commit themselves to moving from success to significance by taking action on some of the world's most pressing challenges.
The spirit of the Aspen Global Leadership Network is to move an emerging generation of leaders “from success to significance” and “from thought to action.” We hope to activate a global cadre of highly entrepreneurial, creative leaders to step “out of their box” and to act to address the foremost challenges of our times – wherever these challenges may lie and however big they may be.
Our Approach
Transforming Leaders
Through our 14 geographic and sector-specific Fellowships, we provide an opportunity for a highly diverse community of proven, high-integrity, entrepreneurial leaders to pause, reflect, and refine how they lead in their homes, at work and in the world at large. Using the Aspen Institute's time-tested leadership seminar model, we challenge them to “paint their lives on a broader canvas” and to stretch and do more for their societies.
About Leadership SeminarsOur Fellowship Programs
Moving the Needle
Through their leadership ventures, Fellows in the Aspen Global Leadership Network are using their passions, skills, and resources in new and creative ways to solve the world's most pressing problems. With over 2,500 ventures launched, Fellows have used their platforms to close educational achievement gaps, improve access to health care, raise financial literacy, create new jobs, fight domestic violence, build new pipelines of ethical leadership, and much, much more.
About Leadership VenturesForging a Global Network
We are creating a global of network of leaders who will support each other as they tackle the world's most pressing problems and hold each other accountable to the highest standards of integrity. Through regional gatherings, alumni seminars, and annual events like the Resnick Aspen Action Forum, Fellows stay connected to the network for life.
Browse the networkResnick Aspen Action Forum
Lifelong Engagement
Our Impact
Stepping Up
Fellows enter the program having demonstrated a great deal of personal success and leave it inspired to to make a greater mark on their communities and the world.
Meaningful Collaboration
The Network connects Fellows through seminars like the Leading in an Era of Globalization series and the annual Resnick Aspen Action Forum so that they can learn from, collaborate with, and support one another.
High-Impact Ventures
As part of the Fellowship, each Fellow brings their talents and energy to bear on a pressing societal challenge by launching a new venture. With over 2,500 active ventures, Fellows are making significant strides on some of the most intractable problems facing our world today.
Our History
In 1997, the Henry Crown Fellowship was established to develop the next generation of community-spirited leaders, providing them with the tools necessary to meet the challenges of business and civic leadership in the 21st century. With the co-founding of the Africa Leadership Initiative in 2002 as his Henry Crown leadership venture, Aspen Institute Executive Vice President and 1998 Fellow Peter Reiling laid the foundation for what would become the Aspen Global Leadership Network. Since joining the Aspen Institute in 2004, he has teamed up with many other Fellows and Institute supporters to launch and grow a range of regional and industry-specific Fellowships, taking the Aspen method of developing values-based leaders around the world.
Important Milestones:
- 1997 – Henry Crown Fellowship founded
- 2002 – Africa Leadership Initiative – Ghana launched
- 2002 – Africa Leadership Initiative – East Africa launched
- 2002 – Africa Leadership Initiative – Mozambique launched (not active)
- 2003 – Africa Leadership Initiative – South Africa launched
- 2004 – Liberty Fellowship launched in South Carolina
- 2005 – Central America Leadership Initiative launched
- 2006 – Africa Leadership Initiative – West Africa launched (merging with ALI – Ghana)
- 2005 – Rodel Fellowship in Public Leadership launched
- 2006 – India Leadership Initiative (now Kamalnayan Bajaj Fellowship) launched
- 2007 – Nigeria Leadership Initiative launched (not active)
- 2007 – Catto Fellowship launched (now the Environment Leaders Fellowship)
- 2007 – Pahara-Aspen Education Fellowship launched
- 2007 – Act II, a precursor to the Action Forum, held in celebration of the 10th anniversary of the Henry Crown Fellowship
- 2009 – Middle East Leadership Initiative launched
- 2009 – The Aspen Global Leadership Network is launched at Act II
- 2012 – Aspen Teacher Leader Fellowship founded (not active)
- 2013 – China Fellowship Program launched
- 2013 – The first Aspen Leaders Action Forum (later renamed the Resnick Aspen Action Forum) convenes in Aspen
- 2015 – Health Innovators Fellowship launched
- 2015 – The Action Forum renamed to the Resnick Aspen Action Forum thanks to a generous $15 million gift from Lynda and Stewart Resnick
- 2016 – Finance Leaders Fellowship launched
- 2019 – Civil Society Fellowship launched
