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WHAT’S THE BIG IDEA? AN URBAN INNOVATION BRAINSTORM
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6 2 0 E A S T H YM A N AV E N U E , A S P E N PA L L A D I U M A S P E N .C O M 9 7 0 .9 2 5 . 8 0 8 8 IDEAS
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CONTENTS
6
| W H AT I S T H E I N ST I T U T E ?
11 | A R O U N D T H E I N ST I T U T E Mark Emmert, president of the NCAA, talks sports, school, and student-athletes; legal scholars join Nina Totenberg for a debate about guns and the Second Amendment; the Henry Crown Fellowship gets a head start on celebrating 20 years; the 2016 John P. McNulty Prize honors Amy Crockett, an obstetrician with a secret weapon for fighting infant mortality; and much more.
11
Courtesy of McNulty Foundation
DEPARTMENTS
34 | I M PAC T A Bezos Scholar hosts a “Local Ideas Festival” focused on the school-to-prison pipeline in North Carolina; Aspen Challenge students discover a passion for teaching their communities about financial literacy; the 2016 Center for Native American Youth’s Champions for Change spotlight rich and enduring native cultures for a new generation; the Institute’s TeamWork initiative creates healthier populations one state at a time. 82
28
Max Taylor Photography
28 | A S H E A R D AT How should institutions of higher education handle their legacies of slavery? The Atlantic’s Ta-Nehisi Coates speaks with two university presidents, Georgetown’s John DeGioia and Harvard’s Drew Gilpin Faust, about how they are reckoning with the long effects of history.
| FAC E S
86
| I N T E R N AT I O N A L PA R T N E R S All of the Institute’s European partners meet to discuss the Aspen Institute’s Initiative for Europe; the Institute welcomes new leadership in Prague and Germany.
88
| FAC TS
Get to know the Institute’s programs. 98
| CO N N E C T W I T H U S
34
Contact our program directors; get in touch on social media.
Dan Bayer
Behind the scenes at Institute events.
PA R T N E R C O N T E N T 52
| AN AWARD FOR THE FUTURE The Rolex Awards for Enterprise recognize potential and creativity, honoring those who are laying the foundation for a better future. Meet this year’s Laureates, who are tackling ambitious projects around the globe—like transforming eye care in sub-Saharan Africa and remedying water scarcity in the Himalayas. 86
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Photo courtesy of Aspen Romania
100 | PA R T I N G S H OT What kind of impact will the Aspen Institute have in 2017? Friends come together to start looking into the year ahead.
THE DATEJUST 41 The new generation of the essential classic, with a new movement and design that keep it at the forefront of watchmaking. It doesn’t just tell time. It tells history.
OYSTER PERPETUAL DATEJUST 41
rolex
oyster perpetual and datejust are
®
trademarks. IDEAS
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CONTENTS
F E AT U R E S
58
64 | THE IDEAS FORUM TAKES OVER DC October 2016 marked the eighth annual Washington Ideas Forum, which hosted some of the world’s most dynamic thinkers in the nation’s capital. Here, Secretary of State John Kerry tackles the crisis in Syria; Bumble CEO Whitney Wolfe explains the recent explosion of dating-app technology; the National Museum of African American History and Culture’s Lonnie Bunch explores the power of museums; and much more. 70 | WHAT’S THE BIG IDEA? In September, the Institute’s Urban Innovation Lab and its Youth & Engagement Programs joined forces to bring together a group of talented social innovators to pitch their original solutions to urban challenges facing adolescents and young adults. Alison Decker looks at four of their big ideas, from a high-school senior’s expertise on imaginative play to tackling racism by design.
64
What’s
the
Big Idea?
THE JOURNAL OF IDEAS 78 | CAN LITERATURE SAVE US? Book awards in the United States have the power to shape public conversations and thrust important topics into the spotlight. But few book awards train their focus directly on fiction’s ability to generate social impact and values. Carole DeSanti describes why the new Aspen Words Literary Prize will shake up America’s bookawards scene. 80| APPLY YOURSELF For many students, college scholarships are vital. But the scholarship application process is far from simple—in fact, it is enormously complex and time consuming. Too often, good students are overwhelmed by the system and stop trying or are left adrift, wondering if they will even be able to attend college as they wait to hear about funding. Karen Gross says there’s an easier way. 4
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70 70
IDEAS
At the Aspen Institute, ideas are often given top billing. In September, the Urban Innovation Lab partnered with Youth & Engagement Programs to make big ideas in youth empowerment the main event, gathering a group of social innovators to pitch their innovative solutions to urban issues facing adolescents and young adults. The program also included a dialogue and discussion with four social innovators—from a high-school senior to acclaimed DC impact entrepreneurs. “This is a way we can step out of our daily work and be enlivened by new ideas,” says Jennifer Bradley, founding director of the Center for Urban Innovation. “We have to think in new ways to make change on the issues that we care about.” In September, the focus was on empowering youth. Rajiv Vinnakota, executive vice president of Youth & Engagement Programs at the Aspen Institute, asked: What could we build if we implemented the Aspen philosophies of leadership and civil discourse in programs that engage young people? Carolyn Zelikow, manager of the Urban Innovation Lab, adds that cities are particularly adept at piloting the kind of policy experiments set forth by social innovators. “Despite the narrative that the United States is a country in decline,” she says, “cities
throughout “Racism is America are actively solving something that tough challenges was designed— from within.” Ideas but it can be ranged from design redesigned and as a weapon against dismantled.” institutional racism to the mobilizing marginalized youth in Baltimore’s inner harbor for a “charm offensive” against discrimination. Dona Anderson, a senior at Capital City Public Charter School, in Washington, DC, and a participant in the Aspen Challenge, offered a big idea that was deceptively simple: play. As part of the Aspen Challenge, in which students are asked to come up with solutions to real-world problems
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ASPEN
TO ACCRA IGNITING GLOBAL ENTREPRENEURIALISM
ON THE COVER
WASHINGTON IDEAS FORUM TOP THINKERS TALK POKÉMON, POLITICS, RACE
WHAT’S THE BIG IDEA? AN URBAN INNOVATION BRAINSTORM
NATIVE INTELLIGENCE INDIAN COUNTRY'S TALENTED YOUNG STEWARDS
A young man practices “brazing,” or soldering, in Chennai, India, at Servals Automation, a social enterprise that develops sustainable-energy products.
C2 Photography
74 | BRIGHT LIGHTS IN THE CITY The Institute headed to Miami this year for the fourth annual CityLab: Urban Solutions to Global Challenges, which gathered 40 mayors and more than 500 international urban leaders and thinkers to talk aging infrastructure, evictions, the homeless, the role of refugees in urban revitalization, and the emergence of driverless cars. Libby Franklin and Azalea Millan go behind the scenes of the two-day summit.
Max Taylor Photography
Photo courtesy of ANDE
58 | FROM ASPEN TO ACCRA The Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs works in emerging-market economies around the world to spur entrepreneurship that helps the poor. Kate McElligott details ANDE’s founding and profiles four of the organizations it works with on the ground.
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The Aspen Institute is an educational and policy studies organization headquartered in Washington, DC. Its mission is to foster leadership based on enduring values and to provide a nonpartisan venue for dealing with critical issues. The Institute has campuses in Aspen, Colorado, and on the Wye River on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. It also maintains offices in New York City and has an international network of partners. 6
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EDITOR'S LETTER Collaboration. Impact. They’re two core Aspen Institute principles. With more than 30 programs and counting, the chance to join forces for change is not just obvious but essential. So when the Youth & Engagement Programs, a major Institute initiative under the direction of Rajiv Vinnakota, joined forces with Jennifer Bradley’s Urban Innovation Lab to bring together adolescents and young entrepreneurs to propose solutions to the problems they face in Washington and Baltimore (page 70), we wanted to be there to listen. As is so often the case, they spoke with not just idealism but simple clarity that gives hope for the kind of collaborations they can themselves make work. “Racism is something that can be designed—but it can be redesigned and dismantled,” one entrepreneur said. We feature Institute impact in a dedicated section every issue, but we have an unusually long section this time, to highlight the Institute’s focuses on youth and to show more of its collaborations. We have four reports from young people who rose to the Aspen Challenge in Chicago (page 34), including two students in Englewood, one of Chicago’s most impoverished neighborhoods, whose Challenge project was teaching highschool students how to use banks rather than extortionate check-cashing services. It’s all part of what Vinnakota calls the need to give young people access to “social capital”—the scaffolding, seen and unseen, that lets people succeed. Another group of high-school students, this one in Raleigh, North Carolina, came together as part of the Bezos Scholars Program to dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline that suddenly became part of their own experience when six students were charged with disorderly conduct over an endof-term prank involving water balloons (page 40). The young woman who spearheaded the team is keeping closely involved as a first-year at the University of North Carolina. Our cover story shows the kind of collaboration that Aspen extends across the globe: helping entrepreneurs in developing countries without reliable access to business and technical expertise get both, and go on to advise others in their own countries. That kind of reverberation—starting with generosity, expertise, energy, and the need to recognize and help people who don’t have it yet—is what the Institute creates, city by town by country, year by year. In the next years ahead, we’ll need and look forward to more of it. And IDEAS will be here bringing that generosity and work to you. —Corby Kummer
WALTER ISAACSON President and Chief Executive Officer ELLIOT F. GERSON Executive Vice President, Policy and Public Programs; International Partners NAMITA KHASAT Executive Vice President, Finance and Administrative Services; Chief Financial Officer; Corporate Treasurer ERIC L. MOTLEY, PHD Executive Vice President, Institutional Advancement;Corporate Secretary PETER REILING Executive Vice President, Leadership and Seminar Programs; Executive Director, Henry Crown Fellowship Program RAJIV VINNAKOTA Executive Vice President, Youth & Engagement Programs CINDY BUNISKI Vice President, Administration; Executive Director, Aspen Wye Campus JAMES M. SPIEGELMAN Vice President, Chief External Affairs Officer; Deputy to the President EDITOR-IN-CHIEF AND PUBLISHER Corby Kummer EXECUTIVE EDITOR Sacha Zimmerman MANAGING EDITOR Alison Decker ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Douglas Farrar SENIOR EDITORS Jean Morra, Tarek Rizk ASSISTANT EDITOR Arica VanBoxtel DESIGN DIRECTOR Katie Kissane-Viola CREATIVE DIRECTOR Paul Viola EDITOR EMERITUS Jamie Miller MANAGING DIRECTOR, COMMUNICATIONS AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS Pherabe Kolb CONTACT EDITORIAL ideas.magazine@aspeninstitute.org ADVERTISING Cynthia Cameron, 970.948.8177, adsales@aspeninstitute.org GENERAL The Aspen Institute, One Dupont Circle NW, Suite 700, Washington, DC 20036 202.736.5800, www.aspeninstitute.org BOARD OF TRUSTEES CHAIRMAN: James S. Crown BOARD OF TRUSTEES Madeleine K. Albright, Paul F. Anderson, Mercedes T. Bass, Miguel Bezos, Richard S. Braddock, Beth A. Brooke-Marciniak, William D. Budinger, William Bynum, Stephen L. Carter, Troy Carter, Cesar Conde, Phyllis Coulter, Katie Couric, Andrea Cunningham, Kenneth L. Davis, John Doerr, Thelma Duggin, Arne Duncan, Michael D. Eisner, L. Brooks Entwistle, Alan Fletcher, Henrietta H. Fore, Ann B. Friedman, Juan Ramón de la Fuente, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Mircea Geoana, David Gergen, Antonio Gracias, Patrick W. Gross, Arjun Gupta, Jane Harman, Kaya Henderson, Hayne Hipp, Ivan Hodac, Mark Hoplamazian, Gerald D. Hosier, Robert J. Hurst, Walter Isaacson, Natalie Jaresko, Salman Khan, Teisuke Kitayama, Eckart von Klaedan, Michael Klein, David H. Koch, Satinder K. Lambah, Laura Lauder, Yo-Yo Ma, Frederic V. Malek, James M. Manyika, William E. Mayer*, Bonnie P. McCloskey, David McCormick, Anne Welsh McNulty, Diane Morris, Karlheinz Muhr, Clare Muñana, Jerry Murdock, Marc Nathanson, William A. Nitze, Her Majesty Queen Noor, Jacqueline Novogratz, Olara A. Otunnu, Elaine Pagels, Carrie Walton Penner, Margot L. Pritzker, Peter A. Reiling, Lynda Resnick, Condoleezza Rice, James Rogers, Ricardo Salinas, Anna Deavere Smith, Michelle Smith, Javier Solana, Robert K. Steel*, Shashi Tharoor**, Laurie M. Tisch, Giulio Tremonti, Roderick K. von Lipsey, Vin Weber *Chairman Emeritus **On Leave of Absence
Roman Cho
LIFETIME TRUSTEES CO-CHAIRMEN: Berl Bernhard, Ann Korologos* LIFETIME TRUSTEES Keith Berwick, James C. Calaway*, William T. Coleman, Jr., Lester Crown, Tarun Das, William H. Donaldson, Sylvia A Earle, Richard N. Gardner, Alma L. Gildenhorn, Jacqueline Grapin, Gerald Greenwald, Irvine O. Hockaday Jr., Nina Rodale Houghton, Anne Frasher Hudson, Jérôme Huret, William N. Joy, Henry A. Kissinger, Leonard A. Lauder*, Robert H. Malott, Olivier Mellerio, Elinor Bunin Munroe, Sandra Day O’Connor, Hisashi Owada, Thomas R. Pickering, Charles Powell, Jay Sandrich, Lloyd G. Schermer, Carlo Scognamiglio, Albert H. Small, Andrew L. Stern, Paul A. Volcker, Leslie H. Wexner, Frederick B. Whittemore, Alice Young *Chairman Emeritus
The Aspen Institute sets high standards to ensure forestry is practiced in an environmentally responsible, socially benefi cial, and economically viable manner. This issue was printed by American Web on recycled fi bers containing 10 percent post-consumer waste, with inks containing a blend of soy base. Our printer is a certifi ed member of the Forestry Stewardship Council, the Sustainable Forestry Initiative, and meets or exceeds all federal Resource Conservation Recovery Act standards.
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AROUND THE INSTITUTE The Revolution Will Be Freelanced These days, no one goes
to work for one company and stays there until retirement. Apps and platforms that connect people with work—such as Uber, Etsy, Airbnb, and TaskRabbit—have changed the nation’s economic dynamics. The Institute’s Future of Work Initiative has been chronicling these changes and assessing what the sharing economy means for the next generation of employees. Check out their recent report, “Sharing & On-Demand Economy: What We Know and Don’t Know.” aspeninstitute.org/future-of-work
72%
5%
The highest rate of participation in the gig economy happens in San Francisco.
of Americans have used a shared service in the on-demand economy in 2015.
More than 4 percent of adults received income from the sharing economy from 2012-2015. That’s a 47-fold increase over previous years, making it by far the fastest-growing sector of the economy.
100%
Freelancing accounted for nearly 1/3 of all jobs added to the economy from 2010 to 2014.
of the net employment growth in the United States from 2005 to 2015 occurred in nontraditional work arrangements: • • • • •
Temporary-agency workers On-call workers Contract workers Independent contractors Freelancers
MILLENNIALS
(ages 18-34) were roughly 9 times more likely than adults aged 65 and older to earn income on labor apps. IDEAS
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AROUND THE INSTITUTE
THE WORLD AT STAKE
Albright
With the upcoming US presidential election in mind, the Aspen Strategy Group convened a panel in August: America’s Future National Security Challenges. The event featured prominent foreign-policy experts, including former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, former National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, and former UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband. Moderated by the group’s director, Nicholas Burns, former undersecretary of state for political affairs, the panel tried to identify solutions to emerging security threats—like China’s alarming maritime activities in the South China Sea, Britain’s shocking decision to leave the European Union, Russia’s growing influence in the Middle East, and the global humanitarian refugee crisis. Looming over these threats was uncertainty about the US presidential election. One thing, however, was clear: “The challenge, whoever is elected president, is really unprecedented,” Hadley warned. “Issues that we thought were settled in this country for 40 to 50 years are now open.” Despite these challenges, the discussants expressed hope: the global middle class, people in history. “The biggest dimension to that growth in the middle class is women,” Miliband pointed out. The panel helped set the agenda for the incoming administration. Only time will tell if the new president will heed its
Dan Bayer
an essential source for stability worldwide, has never comprised so many
advice. aspeninstitute.org/asg
“The challenge, whoever is elected president, is really unprecedented. ... Issues that we thought were settled in this country for 40 to 50 years are now open.” —Stephen Hadley
FIGHTING FOR $15 “The 40-year war on the American middle class has, in fact, paid off well for those who influenced it,” union organizer David Rolf said. In September, the Economic Opportunities Program brought Rolf to the Institute to discuss his new book, The Fight for $15: The Right
Wage for a Working America. Rolf described how he and his co-organizers worked to raise the minimum wage in SeaTac, the ten-square-mile town surrounding the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. Given the workers’ low wages and poor working conditions, Rolf and his team were ultimately able to get the issue on a ballot initiative. Workers and labor activists then “knocked on 10,000 doors 40,000 times” and passed Proposition 1, giving airport and hospitality workers a $15 minimum wage and paid sick leave, among other provisions. Activists who had worked with Rolf also why she put so much effort into fighting for others: “I can’t let someone be like that, working themselves to death, knowing that they could change their situation.” aspeninstitute.org/eop
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Rolf
Ian Wagreich
took the stage. Homecare-worker Tanika Aden explained
ASPEN LAUNCHES $35,000 LITERARY PRIZE In September, the Institute announced the launch of the
Brodeur
Aspen Words Literary Prize, an annual award recognizing an influential work of fiction that focuses on vital contemporary issues and makes a social impact. “We hope that this prize will elevate the role that fiction can play in illuminating social issues and building compassion around society’s greatest human challenges,” said Aspen Words Executive Director Adrienne Brodeur. The $35,000 award is one of the largest literary prizes in the United States and one of the few focused exclusively on social change. The inaugural award will go to a book published in English in the United States in 2017. Eligible works include novels or short-story collections that address violence, inequality, gender, the environment, immigration, religion, race, or other social issues. After all, as Elliot Gerson, the Institute’s executive vice president of policy and public programs, put it, “Literature is one of the most powerful ways to expand our perspectives and find common ground.” The finalists and winner will be selected by a five-member jury: Stephen L. Carter, an Institute Trustee, New York Times best-selling novelist, and law professor at Yale; Jessica Fullerton, a librarian and longtime Aspen Words participant; Phil Klay, an Iraq War Marine Corps veteran and National Book Award winner for his short-story collection Redeployment; Alondra Nelson, the dean of social science at Columbia University and the author of The Social Life of DNA; and Akhil Sharma, the PEN/Hemingway Award winner and Folio Prize winner for his novels An Obedient Father and Family John Curry
Life respectively. Submissions will open to publishers in 2017; finalists and the winner will be honored at a ceremony in 2018 in New York City. aspenwords.org/programs/literary-prize
“We hope that this prize will elevate the role that fiction can play in illuminating social issues and building compassion around society’s greatest human challenges.” —Adrienne Brodeur THE STORY OF HUMANITY Tell me of a time you were transformed, a time you faced danger, a time you were challenged, a time you grew. These lines form the foundation of Story Swap, an Aspen Words program that uses storytelling and writing to build empathy between different populations. Participants are paired to share transformative personal stories. The partners then write each other’s stories, imagining what it’s like to walk in another’s shoes. By crafting meaningful narratives, participants come away with deeper understandings of their shared humanity. John Annis, the senior vice president of the Sarasota County Community Foundation and a 2015 ASCEND Fellow at the Institute, participated last year. “I’ve never seen individuals bond so quickly and permanently,” he says. “As a retired Marine Corps sergeant major, the idea of being vulnerable wasn’t something I was excited about. Now, I can’t imagine not doing it. It truly changed me.” aspenwords.org IDEAS
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AROUND THE INSTITUTE
RACE AND A CYCLE OF CRISIS In September, Jonathan Capehart, a columnist for The
Washington Post, sat down with Jeff Chang, the director of Stanford University’s Institute for Diversity in the Arts, to discuss Chang’s new book, We Gon’ Be Alright: Notes on Race
and Resegregation, an in-depth look at the current intersection of arts, culture, race, and politics in America from protests in Ferguson to lyrics by Beyoncé. Chang walked the audience through the “cycle of crisis” in American race relations, which he said are at a breaking point as past progress unravels: “We’ve seen the dismantling and reversal of the infrastructure we created to move us toward equity and justice.” Chang also discussed the racial tensions inherent in his own identity. Raised in Hawaii, he labeled himself an “in-between”—a reflection of find difficult to navigate. He argued that conversations about identity are vital. “We can choose to sit on the fence—
Shriver
decide not to take a stand—while the battle rages all around,” Chang said. “That’s why I write. … I don’t want to see, seven generations from now, a situation in which color, class, and caste are much more divided.” Finally, Chang looked at art as a means to advance new ideas. “Cultural change always precedes political change,” he said. “You have to have the imagination for change before you can even think about policy.” He cited as an example the messages of transformational justice embedded in Beyoncé’s visually resonant Lemonade album, which he said paralleled themes imbued in the Black Lives Matter movement. Much of that album, he said, is about anger, but it reaches an important grace note at the end. “Not only do we have to get justice for those who have been harmed,” Chang said, “but also redemption for those who have done the harming.” aspeninstitute.org/arts
Dan Bayer
a forged identity many Pacific Islanders and Asian Americans
WHOLE KIDS Education research and brain science both compellingly demonstrate what parents have always known: young people’s success is inextricably linked to healthy social and emotional development. Yet the nation’s predominant approach to K–12 education fails to develop the whole student. The United States needs to complement its focus on academic achievement with healthy social, emotional, and cognitive development. That’s why in September the Institute announced its new National Commission on Social, Emotional, and Academic Development. Over the next two years, the commission will sponsor the most important conversation in a generation about what constitutes success for schools and students, and it will help to develop a roadmap for a new era of education. The commission is co-chaired by Linda Darling-Hammond, the president and CEO of the Learning Policy Institute; John Engler, the president of the Business Roundtable and a former governor of Michigan; and Tim Shriver, the co-founder and chair of the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning and the chairman of the Special Olympics. The group will include teachers, superintendents, governors, and leaders in health, education, business, and the military. It will be informed by scientists and educators, a parent advisory panel, people contribute to the conversation. All students deserve to thrive, whether in school, a 21st-century workplace, or
Chang and Capehart
14
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in life. www.aspensead.org
Steve Johnson
key partners, and a youth commission—to ensure that young
VIRTUAL LEARNING In October, the Aspen Institute’s Stevens Initiative launched a series of competitions to fund virtual exchange programs in the United States and the Middle East and North Africa that improve understanding, respect, and dialogue across cultures and equip young people with the skills for success in a global economy. The initiative is looking for programs that demonstrate they meet the educational needs of refugee students from the Middle East and North Africa; programs focused on teaching science, technology, engineering, and math skills; programs rooted in project-based learning; and programs that include inperson exchange as well as innovative communication methods. “The Stevens Initiative offers the opportunity for a generation of young people to engage with the world around them,” says Elliot Gerson, executive vice president of policy and public programs for the Institute. “They learn together, acquiring the skills and perspectives they need to succeed.” The initiative is a lasting tribute to Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, a
WHERE BREAKOUT BOOKS BEGIN
public servant who dedicated himself to building understanding between people from different countries. The initiative made awards to ten US organizations in 2016, reaching more than
This fall, the National Book Foundation announced its ten nominees for
21,000 students in 25 US states and 17
the 2016 National Book Award for fiction, celebrating the best in American
countries in the Middle East and North
literature. Two former Aspen Words writers-in-residence are on that shortlist.
Africa.
Brad Watson (Miss Jane) and Adam Haslett (Imagine Me Gone) both worked
The competition is open to
on early drafts of their novels during their month-long writing residencies,
organizations in the United States as
sponsored by the Catto Shaw Foundation. Several other alumni of Aspen
well as the Middle East and North Africa.
Words programs had breakout books this year, too. Terry McMillan even
Interested and qualified parties are invited
thanked Aspen Words in the acknowledgements of her new novel, I Almost
to submit letters of interest. The Stevens
Forgot About You, for giving her “Boo Boo the Bear to keep me company”
Initiative will solicit full applications from
(she had a few bear sightings during her stay). Vanessa Hua, a 2014 Emerging
selected organizations.
Writer Fellow, published her debut short-story collection, Deceit and Other
In addition to making awards, the
Possibilities, which gives voice to Asian immigrant families in America. And
Stevens Initiative provides partnership
poet Safiya Sinclair, also a 2014 Emerging Writer Fellow, published her first
support, outreach, promotion, access to
collection, Cannibal, a meditation on postcolonial identity in Jamaica, race
evaluation instruments, best practices, and
relations in America, womanhood, and exile.
access to technology platforms.
aspenwords.org
stevensinitiative.org IDEAS
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AROUND THE INSTITUTE
The Health, Medicine and Society Program brought legal scholars Darrell Miller and Eugene Volokh to the Institute in September for a debate on the legal intricacies behind the Second Amendment and the history of the role of guns in the United States. Gun-regulation complexities partially come from different readings of the Constitution over the years, Volokh, a professor of law at the University of California, explained. “You can’t look at every case afresh,” he said; you have to look at each case in historical context. In the past 100 years, for example, there have been major shifts in Second Amendment interpretation. The latest, said moderator Nina Totenberg, was in 2008, when the Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution guarantees an individual the right to own and keep a gun for self-defense. For Totenberg, this represented a switch from collective rights to individual rights: “How did this turnaround take place in the law, how far-reaching is it, and what does it portend for the future?” she asked. Even if legal experts agree on an interpretation of the Constitution, said Miller, a professor of law at Duke University, there are still a myriad of questions on how to implement that interpretation in daily life—like how Second Amendment rights should be applied to people convicted of a felony. “Once we get to the implementation issue,” said Miller, “things tend to break apart very quickly.” aspeninstitute.org/health
ASPEN IN NEW YORK Longtime New York Times Supreme Court reporter Linda Greenhouse told an Institute audience that, by studying the Court, she could understand what was troubling the country: the Court is in “constant dialogue with the public,” she said. The September event, part of the “Conversations with Great Leaders, in Memory of Preston Robert Tisch” series, featured Greenhouse, a journalist-in-residence and lecturer at Yale Law School, in conversation with David Greenberg, a history professor at Rutgers. Greenhouse discussed her Times column and her latest book, The Burger Court and the Rise of the Judicial Right. Then in October, the arts took center stage: Adam Weinberg, the Alice Pratt Brown director of the Whitney Museum, and Thelma Golden, the director and chief curator of the Studio Museum, discussed their work with Damian Woetzel, the Institute’s Arts Program director. Golden said being a Henry Crown Fellow had shaped her view of leadership and led to “understanding my own values and how to have those values make an impact.” Weinberg, too, discussed creating social change: “Artists challenge themselves, but at the same time, they challenge the world.” Golden and Weinberg also talked about relocating their museums. The Whitney recently moved to the Meatpacking District, while the Studio Museum is building a new space in Harlem. Each stressed the importance of being responsive to their communities.
Totenberg, Miller, and Volokh
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Laurence Genon
HEALTHY DEBATE
YOUNG ATHLETES ARE TOO GOOD “Student-athletes are coming into college now with so much more experience,” said Mark Emmert, president of the National College Athletic Association. “They’ve been playing quarterback 12 months out of the year. They’ve been going to summer camp.” They have, in short, been doing little else. In September, Emmert sat down with Aspen Institute Sports & Society Program Executive Director Tom Farrey to discuss the NCAA’s recent challenges and how the organization is trying to promote healthy role models. The conversation also examined collegiate student-athlete health and the scholarship process. Increased attention to young athletes’ physical and mental health needs to be paid, Emmert said, especially because, “Being Americans, we can turn anything into an industry.” And, in the case of youth athletics, that is exactly what Americans have done. Even children under ten are specializing in sports, encouraged by parents tempted by scholarships and future Division I participation. However, this intense focus takes a
Laurence Genon
financial toll on families, shutting out those who can’t make the economic sacrifice, and often results in lasting injuries. The NCAA is “still responsible for the growth and development of young men and women,” Emmert said. And student-athletes
Emmert
are students first. aspeninstitute.org/sports-society
SECRETS IN CYBERSPACE The Institute, CNBC, and MIT’s Computer Science and
Artificial
Intelligence
Laboratory
hosted
a
groundbreaking one-day event, Securing Our Future: Cambridge Cyber Summit, with top leaders focused on combating urgent cyber threats. Speakers included FBI
Deputy
Director
Andrew
McCabe,
Treasury
Department Deputy Secretary Sarah Raskin, and nowformer Justice Department Assistant Attorney General John Carlin. Their discussions tackled dozens of cyber issues, like securing corporate vulnerabilities, creating hack-proof
software,
and
exploring
the
potential
of “white-hat hacking”—or hacking for social good. Institute CEO Walter Isaacson kicked off the summit, held in October, with a candid conversation with National Security Agency Director Michael Rogers on the tension between security and liberty. “Part of our CNBC/David Grogan
challenge going forward,” Rogers said, “is to create oversight mechanisms that enable intelligence and law enforcement to do their important duties in a way that both engenders confidence for the citizens we serve and acknowledges that we can’t just publicly get into the Rogers
details of everything we do.”
cnbc.com/cybersummit IDEAS
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AROUND THE INSTITUTE
WHAT IS AMERICA? Award-winning film documentarian Ken Burns recently
Jefferson’s defeat of John Adams in 1800. And while
spoke to the Society of Fellows in Aspen. Moderator Ken
Abraham Lincoln’s 1864 landslide Civil War victory may
Adelman asked Burns to address US presidential campaigns
seem inevitable now, it was unanticipated at the time. In
throughout history during the event, “Elections that Speak
1904, Teddy Roosevelt epitomized the cult of personality
to Us Today.” Burns used clips from his oeuvre of more
visible in today’s politics—before a crushing defeat in a 1912
than 30 films (including The Civil War, The Roosevelts, and
three-party race. And the polarity that Prohibition created
Jackie Robinson) to show how elections bring up age-old
in Herbert Hoover’s 1928 election mirrors America’s current
American themes—like the role of government, collective
blue-state/red-state divide. Finally, John F. Kennedy’s and
versus individual freedom, hyperbole, cult of personality, and
Lyndon Johnson’s wins in 1960 and 1964 exemplify the
empathy in leadership. While the present may seem dire in its
power of the civil rights movement to determine American
intensity, Burns emphasized wisdom from Ecclesiastes: “What
leadership, then as now.
has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under
Burns said elections are a time to ask: “What is this thing called America? Who are these people called Americans?”
the sun.” Burns posited that the dirtiest election in US history was not a modern event but instead dates back to Thomas
The answers are what continue to define Americans as a nation. aspeninstitute.org/sof
C2 Photography
Burns
18
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Courtesy Federal Communications Commission
Wheeler
YOUR DIGITAL LIFE The 31st-annual Conference on Communications Policy,
recommendations to ensure inclusion and expand opportunity
convened by the Institute’s Communications and Society
for all Americans, encourage ongoing investment in digital and
Program, explored the key issues that will face the new
telecom innovation, and create a trusted online environment
administration.
for citizens’ digital lives. Participants also focused on the
Chairman
Tom
Federal Wheeler
Communications opened
by
continuing challenges posed by cybersecurity and threats
suggesting that the United States use its past experience in
to privacy. They recommended that the new administration
telecommunications policy as an “azimuth” to chart a path
and Congress convene a blue-ribbon commission to map out
forward.
which agencies are working on cyber issues, identify gaps, and
Participants—regulators,
the
Commission
conference
policymakers,
scholars,
telecom officials, and public-interest leaders—developed
recommend security improvements. aspeninstitute.org/c&s
WALL STREET V. MAIN STREET Is Wall Street bad for business? That’s the question Rana Foroohar, the author of Makers and Takers: The Rise of Finance and the Fall of American
Business, explored at a recent event hosted by the Institute’s Business and Society Program. In conversation with Felix Salmon, senior editor at Fusion, Foroohar described how the “financialization” of America perpetuates Wall Street’s reign over Main Street and contributes to the gap between rich and poor. While the financial industry accounts for only 4 percent of all US jobs, the industry earns 25 percent of all corporate profits.
According to Foroohar, today’s staggering level of
“financialization” is the result of 40 years of policy choices. Restoring a healthier balance will require policy that reigns in financial complexity, Trisha King
reduces the economy’s reliance on debt, and rexamines the purpose of corporations in society. “The development of financial capitalism has been a closed conversation,” Foroohar said. aspeninstitute.org/bsp Foroohar
IDEAS
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AROUND THE INSTITUTE
CHANGING THE WORLD
ONE LIFE AT A TIME
The John P. McNulty Prize recognizes people who have been called to meaningful action through the Fellowships of the Aspen Global Leadership Network. The McNulty Prize winner is selected by a jury chaired by former Secretary of State and Institute Trustee Madeleine Albright and is awarded $100,000; each laureate receives $10,000. Learn more at mcnultyprize.org or @McNultyPrize.
THE WINNER OF THE 2016 MCNULTY PRIZE AMY CROCKETT | CENTERING PREGNANCY SOUTH CAROLINA | USA A Doctor’s Quest to Transform Birth Outcomes Obstetrician and Institute Liberty Fellow Amy Crockett helps women in South Carolina find the secret weapon to fighting infant mortality: each other.
and that has cut costs across South Carolina. When Crockett discovered that the social bonds created in group prenatal care significantly improved the lives of her own patients, she decided to make improving statewide access to the model her Liberty Fellowship venture. Centering Pregnancy dramatically
Every year in the United States, more than 500,000 babies
reduces preterm birth rates, eliminates racial disparities
are born preterm, resulting in life-long neurosensory and
in infant health, and slashes neonatal intensive-care unit
cognitive disabilities, disparities in education, gaps in health
admissions, resulting in state medical savings of more than
and employment, and additional lifetime medical costs of more
$7 million. Furthermore, Crockett has convinced Medicaid and
than $26 billion. South Carolina in particular faces stark preterm
private insurers like BlueCross BlueShield to come on board,
birth rates, worse than those of Sudan and Bangladesh. But at
ensuring that more than 85 percent of pregnant women in
a time when health care costs are soaring, Crockett is leading
South Carolina now have access to Centering Pregnancy care.
an expansion of Centering Pregnancy, an innovative model of
Crockett’s leadership is spurring other states to replicate the
group prenatal care that leads to healthier moms and babies
model and improve birth outcomes across the nation.
McNulty Foundation
Crockett
20
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Dan Bayer
Anne McNulty
THE 2016 MCNULTY PRIZE LAUREATES KC HARDIN ESPERANZA | Panama
Courtesy KC Hardin
Working at the individual, group, and community level to address the root causes of gang violence in Panama City, real-estate developer and Central America Leadership Initiative Fellow KC Hardin is demobilizing street gangs and reintegrating former members into society. Using a holistic curriculum of education and entrepreneurship, Esperanza supports entire groups in the historic city center to find alternative, productive sources of income and a sense of dignity. Hardin
ANDREW ZALOUMIS
Courtesy Andrew Zaloumis
iSIMANGALISO RURAL ENTERPRISE ACCELERATOR PROGRAM South Africa A beautiful and vital UNESCO World Heritage Site, iSimangaliso Wetland Park is also situated in one of the poorest regions of South Africa. Park CEO and Africa Leadership Initiative-South Africa Fellow Andrew Zaloumis founded the Rural Enterprise Accelerator Program to transform an aid-dependent economy into a thriving one. The program provides entrepreneurs with training, mentorship, and seed capital to start small businesses in and around the historic park, igniting a cycle of job creation and
Zaloumis
economic growth.
MUKTI DATTA MANDAKINI WOMEN WEAVERS | India Courtesy Mukti Datta
In the wake of massive floods in 2013, India Leadership Initiative Fellow and ruraldevelopment advocate Mukti Datta pioneered and replicated a model of weaving cooperatives. Mandakini Women Weavers provides women with sustainable livelihoods linked to global markets. The project’s success started a new hub for handlooms and created opportunities for women weavers across India’s Himalayan region. Datta IDEAS
WINTER 2016/2017
21
AROUND THE INSTITUTE
Scott Shephard
Obama addresses the 2015 graduates of Lake Area Technical Institute in South Dakota.
“THE OSCARS FOR COMMUNITY COLLEGES” Community
colleges
provide
an
essential
pathway
to
good jobs and higher education to more than seven
THE 2017 ASPEN PRIZE FINALISTS:
million Americans every year. But while most students find
•
Anoka-Ramsey Community College | Minnesota
opportunity in community college, others are still failing to
•
Broward College | Florida
•
Chaffey College | California
national priority in recent years. Since 2010, the Aspen Prize
•
Indian River State College | Florida
for Community College Excellence has played a significant
•
Lake Area Technical Institute | South Dakota
and advancing a national conversation about how community
•
Northeast Community College | Nebraska
colleges can improve. By identifying and honoring schools that
•
Odessa College | Texas
both while students are in college and after they graduate—
•
Pasadena City College | California
the prize has set a new standard for what it means to be
•
San Jacinto College | Texas
•
West Kentucky Community and Technical College | Kentucky
attain their education and career goals. That’s why improving community-college student success has emerged as a critical
role in bringing needed attention to these vital institutions
strive for and achieve high levels of success for all students—
exceptional. Last year, while speaking at Lake Area Technical Institute, one of the finalist schools, President Obama called the Aspen Prize “basically the Oscars for community colleges.” In September, the Aspen College Excellence Program announced the ten finalists for the 2017 Aspen Prize. By
The Aspen College Excellence Program is using what it learns
fundamentally reforming teaching, programs, and advising,
from prizewinners and finalists to both help community colleges
these schools are redefining what community colleges can
across the United States improve and develop a new cadre of
achieve in learning, degree completion, employment, earning
dynamic presidents capable of leading community colleges to
potential, and equitable outcomes for low-income students
excellence. To learn more, visit highered.aspeninstitute.org or
and students of color.
email cep.info@aspeninstitute.org.
22
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WE BELIEVE GOOD STARTS YOUNG .................
SM
That’s why Allstate supports more than 150 local youth empowerment programs. From helping curb youth violence to promoting education and volunteerism, we’re giving young people the resources they need to change our world for good. LEARN more at Allstate.com/GoodStartsYoung © 2016 Allstate Insurance Company
Allstate is a proud underwriter of the 2016 Aspen Ideas Festival. IDEAS
WINTER 2016/2017
23
Finance Leaders Fellow Bryan Lewis
THE FIRST FELLOWS OF FINANCE
24
Is it possible to improve trust and connection between
the world, including Jennifer Li, CFO of Baidu (China);
society and its financial institutions? Can those at the helm
Katherine Tweedie, executive director at Investec Investment
be influenced to lead with integrity? The Institute’s new
Institute (England); and Keith Mestrich, president and CEO
Finance Leaders Fellowship will explore these questions
of Amalgamated Bank (United States). The Finance Leaders
and more with annual classes of 20 carefully selected
Fellowship held its first seminar in Aspen in October and
Fellows. Through text-based seminars, Fellows will build
was made possible by the lead underwriting support of
on their business success by shaping the future of finance.
the CFA Institute and Christopher Varelas, as well as major
Fellows will commit to undertaking a leadership venture
support from David McCormick, Ranji Nagaswami and
of their own design that advances the positive role of
Bo Hopkins, Lisa Shalett, and the Pactolus Family Foundation.
finance in society. They will join a community of more
Nominations for the second class of Finance Leaders
than 2,300 Fellows from 51 countries as part of the Aspen
Fellows closes November 30. To learn more, contact
Global Leadership Network. Members of the inaugural
tayo.fatokimi@aspeninstitute.org or visit agln.aspeninstitute.
class are senior- and executive-level leaders from around
org/fellowships/financeleaders.
IDEAS
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Dan Bayer
AROUND THE INSTITUTE
IDEAS
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25
Alain Chuard
AROUND THE INSTITUTE
A reunion with members of the 2015 class of Henry Crown Fellows
HENRY CROWN’S LEGACY Since 1996, the Henry Crown Fellowship Program has united entrepreneurial business leaders in a series of seminars, asking them to reflect on what enlightened leadership means—and
“ I feel a life-long connection with other Fellows, which ensures I will have guidance on my ever-winding journey.”
how they can best use it to produce meaningful change. Today, there are more than 400
—Anne Devereux-Mills
of St. Louis to create the Aspen Young Leaders Fellowship, aimed at developing the next
Henry Crown Fellows. In celebration of the 20th anniversary of the program, Fellows from nearly all 20 classes held reunions—hitting pause on their busy lives to reflect and recommit to acting on their core ideals. “I feel a life-long connection with other Fellows which ensures I will have guidance on my ever-winding journey,” said 2003 Henry Crown Fellow and interim CEO of Marchex Anne Devereux-Mills. She has been working on social-justice issues to help pass California’s Proposition 36, which will deliver fair sentencing to thousands of nonviolent inmates. “The Fellowship is not something you ‘do.’ It’s something you become,” said Tim Noonan, a 2008 Fellow and vice president at the Boeing Company. “We are part of Henry Crown’s living legacy, and we have a duty to pass it on to others in our thoughts and actions.” Noonan and fellow Henry Crown Fellow Scott Bush have partnered with others in the city generation of purpose-driven leaders to address the the city’s challenges. The Fellowship experience is unique for every participant, but what unites Fellows is a feeling of friendship cultivated in the seminar room. That sense of true fellowship continues to bring them together year after year, and renews their desire to do more to make a positive impact on society—from success to significance. agln.aspeninstitute.org
26
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Edward James Olmos
HOW TO BUILD A CITY OF OPPORTUNITY The Institute’s Latinos and Society Program traveled to Los Angeles in August to host the second-annual America’s Future Summit: Reimagining Opportunity in a Changing Nation, which featured conversations on opportunity and equity for about 215 people of diverse ages, expertise, and backgrounds. The summit helps participants explore innovations that advance opportunity and spark new ideas on bringing equity to Latino communities. Program Chairman Monica Lozano launched the event, explaining, “Your zip code, the color of skin, your gender, your immigration status, your language determine whether you have access to the tools and on-ramps to opportunity.” With a variety of thoughtful panel discussions, artistic interventions, interviews, and presentations, speakers reimagined opportunity based on their unique backgrounds and perspectives. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti spoke about the challenges and solutions to equity in urban America: “Building a city of opportunity requires us to put a lens at where people are still suffering and where they still come short. That’s the first step. Second step is then to look at, what do we
HP Associates
build to make sure that everyone has an equal shot moving forward.” And PolicyLink’s Angela Glover Blackwell declared, “Equity is the anecdote to inequality.” aspeninstitute.org/latinos-and-society
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IDEAS
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27
Coates, Faust and DeGioia
EXPELLING SLAVERY FROM COLLEGE Every fall, the Institute—in partnership with The Atlantic— descends on Washington, DC, for the Washington Ideas Forum, three days of discussions about the most pressing questions of the day. One such question this year was about how institutions of higher education should handle their legacies of slavery. After months of campus protests demanding that building names be changed or reparations made, The Atlantic’s Ta-Nehisi Coates spoke to two university presidents, John DeGioia of Georgetown and Drew Gilpin Faust of Harvard, about moving forward by confronting a difficult past. (This conversation has been edited and condensed.) 28
IDEAS
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All Photos: Max Taylor Photography
AS HEARD AT: WASHINGTON IDEAS FORUM
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AS HEARD AT: WASHINGTON IDEAS FORUM
“We’re at a point around the country—particularly at elite colleges and universities— where folks are, at last, having to reckon with the long effects of history.” — Ta-Nehisi Coates
TA-NEHISI COATES: We’re at a point around the country— particularly at elite colleges and universities—where folks are, at last, having to reckon with the long effects of history. We see this in the name-changing that has been requested at various universities. We see this in South Carolina, with the taking-down of the Confederate flag. And we can definitely see this at Georgetown, with its recent efforts. What is happening with Georgetown’s efforts to reconcile itself to its past? JOHN DEGIOIA: Georgetown had a tragic moment in the early
years of its history that we have been trying to come to terms with. In 1838, Jesuit priests on plantations in Maryland had enslaved children, women, and men; they arranged a transaction to sell 272 of them to a landowner in Louisiana. With that sale, some of the proceeds were sent to Georgetown. We benefited through that sale and through the institution of slavery. COATES: Do you have a translation of what the dollars were then
to today? DEGIOIA: The transaction was worth about $115,000 in 1838,
which would equate to about $3.3 million today. The first payment, the down payment, which is what we can account for right now, was $25,000, of which Georgetown received $17,000, which would probably be worth about $500,000 today. But as we’ve unfolded our work, we have acknowledged much deeper commitments that Georgetown is prepared to make. About two years ago, we began this work to reconcile ourselves with our history. We were inspired by the fact that Georgetown had a building named for the person responsible for this 272-person transaction. And we knew we had to come to terms with it. The history was well-known. We had taught it at Georgetown. We knew we had a new moment to engage in our community in a very different way. COATES: Can you outline the commitments that have been made
so far? DEGIOIA: We made a decision last fall to take names off buildings
and place different names on them. One will be named for Isaac Hawkins, who is the first name on the manifest of the 272 children, 30
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Coates
men, and women who were sold. Another will be named for a free woman of color, a religious woman who lived in the Georgetown neighborhood and who bore extraordinary witness during the time in which this all occurred. The commitment that has probably received the most attention is a decision regarding descendants of the 272 people who were sold. Georgetown will treat them in the same way that we would regard those who have an enduring relationship with our community. These are faculty, staff, and alumni who have a sustained educational relationship at Georgetown. In the course of our process of determining undergraduate admission, we give care and attention in a special way to those folks. We are a very selective institution so I don’t want to overstate what it means, but it was an effort to show the kind of respect we think appropriate in this moment. COATES: One of the immediate responses I heard about that was:
“Fine, that’s a great step, but what about actual cash support for those students who might be able to take advantage of that?” DEGIOIA: This gets a little lost in the complexities of financial aid
at universities, but Georgetown is one of five institutions that are need-blind. When someone is admitted to our university, we don’t know their ability to pay. We meet the full need of students. It’s a
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AS HEARD AT: Faust and DeGioia
“We are trying to understand what the place of slavery was in building the institution we have today: What were the contributions made by slaves to Harvard’s past? — Drew Gilpin Faust determination based on need. We are committed to covering their full cost, so we would continue that process with every student. COATES: How have you dealt with this discussion at Harvard? DREW GILPIN FAUST: There are interesting contrasts between our two institutions. We’re both venerable. We were both around when slavery was embedded into the fabric of the United States. But Harvard was a part of a New England consciousness in denial: “Oh, we didn’t have any part to do with slavery.” But slavery was legal in Massachusetts until 1783. We have become increasingly aware of how slavery was a part of the everyday life of Massachusetts in the colonial era and, therefore, of Harvard. We are also aware that cotton was an economic engine for Massachusetts, for many people connected to Harvard, and therefore it supported Harvard in a variety of ways. So we are 32
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exploring that and trying to understand what the place of slavery was in building the institution we have today: What were the contributions made by slaves to Harvard’s past? Research done by students found the names of four individuals who worked in the households of Harvard presidents in the 18th century. Last spring, we put a plaque on a building memorializing those individuals and their contributions as a first step in enshrining the history of slavery in Harvard’s understanding of itself. I had the great privilege of visiting the National Museum of African American History and Culture last week, and I was struck by a quotation by James Baldwin: “It’s not about the past. It’s so embedded within us, in who we are in every way.” That, to me, is an essential part of understanding where we came from and how to build a future that creates students, faculty, human beings, citizens, who have the necessary self-consciousness about the possibilities of evil and injustice.
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The Opening Forum in Chicago, 2016
RISING TO THE CHALLENGE
The Aspen Challenge asks students to imagine solutions to the problems they face within their own communities. Below, three participants from MoneyLYFE, one of the 2016 winning teams, and the man who issued their challenge, share their stories of how they improved financial literacy in their community—and took a trip to Aspen along the way. 34
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Dan Bayer
IMPACT: ASPEN CHALLENGE
Lane Johnson Broker Associate Dannielle Gaines Broker Associate Doug Leibinger VP / Broker Frankie Benjamin Broker Associate
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IMPACT: ASPEN CHALLENGE
A COACH’S PERSPECTIVE
Williams and Caneva
Last January, my principal came by my desk in the library of the Lindblom Math and Science Academy, a high school in Engelwood, and handed me a brochure with pictures of students commanding a stage, eyes focused on the crowd. “Would you be interested in coaching this team?” he said. “It’s called the Aspen Challenge. I think it’s about student inventions and maybe nature? I haven’t looked at it all that much, but it sounded like you.” I quickly glanced through the brochure, intrigued by the students’ postures of determination and belief. After a bit of research and some YouTube viewing of past Aspen Challenge student presentations, I told my principal I would coach—and that it wasn’t exactly about student inventions or nature. We both were excited. After compiling a team of eight students from three different high-school grade levels, four different ethnicities, and seven different Chicago neighborhoods, we held our first team meeting. I showed the students the same videos I had watched. In particular, our team was in awe of a Los Angeles team that had gotten communities across the city to pledge to help clean up the shorelines. “They did this in seven weeks? We can’t do that in seven weeks!” They were curious and overwhelmed at the same time, and they hadn’t even heard about which challenges would be offered yet. If you had told any of us that we would have a similar impact on our own community of Englewood, one of the most impoverished areas of Chicago, we wouldn’t have believed you. 36
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But then came the opening forum, in Chicago. After hearing all of the challenges, our team was most captivated by the financial-literacy challenge. During the student-led Q&A, the majority of students in the room defended the decision to use currency exchange checkcashing services over banking institutions. My students were shocked at how distrustful their communities were of banking systems. We would find out later that our team was the only team out of the 20 to choose that challenge. Team MoneyLYFE was born. “We should have a bank fair,” team member Qiama Williams suggested at our next meeting. “We could have different banks in our gym like a college fair. People could sign up for an account at the fair with an actual banker.” The group agreed. Team Captain Gabriela Morales took charge and delegated the team roles. With a hard deadline of seven weeks, we couldn’t afford inefficiency. Meetings became more frequent, team members became more invested, and they started to bond in a way I haven’t seen in a nonathletic extracurricular activity or enrichment program. I have coached several athletic teams at the high-school level, but usually the squad has played together for years. I’ve also been a part of enrichment programs that focus on academics in which students excel. But the Aspen Challenge was unique: I had a team of eight students very different in gender, age, race, and neighborhood who had never worked together and who also knew little about the topic they had chosen. Half of the team didn’t have a bank account before we began the challenge. Yet they would go on to lead two bank fairs reaching over 225 people, teach classes to eighth graders in the Englewood community to inform them to make smart financial decisions, create a website, and use social media to communicate the importance of financial literacy to teens. I often think about why they delved into the topic with such persistence. Sure, the trip to Aspen as the reward was an exciting thought. But really, we wanted to see if their ideas could become a reality for the Englewood community. The seven-week time period didn’t allow for doubt or negativity to creep in. If it ever did come up in a meeting, I would squash it and say, “YOLO people, YOLO.” (For the uninitiated to rapper Drake’s vernacular: “You only live once.”) We knew we only had one chance. It is difficult to articulate the pride I had when our team took the stage at the competition and became real-life versions of the students I had seen in the brochure and on YouTube. As an urban public school teacher for 13 years, I’ve experienced amazing moments in my classroom, but never this fascinating. The experience has made me ask students for more ideas regarding the library and the writing center I run. I reached out to the same neighborhood elementary school we worked with in MoneyLYFE; besides teaching financial-literacy courses there, our writing center plans to offer tutoring services on a daily basis. I am forever changed by the experience.
Gina Caneva is a teacher, librarian, and writing center director at Lindblom Math and Science Academy.
Dan Bayer
By Gina Caneva
LIFE AFTER MONEYLYFE By Alexis Smith
Dan Bayer
MoneyLYFE students in action
“Hello, sir. Have you talked to someone from MoneyLYFE?” I gazed at the tall man patiently as I waited for his response. The stack of fliers in my hand burned to be passed out. “No, I haven’t. What is it?” My eyes lit up and my face split into a grin as I delivered my speech about the bank fair we were holding in the library of my high school, Lindblom Math and Science Academy, in West Englewood, as part of the Aspen Challenge. As I walked away from the man after attempting to sell him on why he should attend our bank fair—with promises of interesting information and cool gifts like t-shirts and wristbands—my mind went to how much being a part of MoneyLYFE has changed me. I should explain what MoneyLYFE is. We are a studentled organization created as a response to the Aspen Challenge. MoneyLYFE aims to increase financial literacy in Englewood, one of the most impoverished neighborhoods in Chicago, through visiting schools to teach students about the benefits of saving, hosting bank fairs to increase the amount of bank households, and creating interesting videos about finance. I served as an event planner for our bank fairs, where we talked to people about the benefits of creating a bank account while attempting to get them to create an account, and helped to create the curriculum we are using to teach students. Our bank fairs helped me become a more adaptable person, connect with my community, and be more sociable. While planning the events, we encountered various problems. For instance, most of the banks we contacted had to pull out of participating because our fair fell during tax week. Only one, Marquette Bank, was able to attend. But its representative was able to talk to attendees, which led to some of them opening an account. Hosting bank representatives required the team to learn all about banking systems to teach our fellow students—sometimes not the most engaging of topics. Chima Aharanway, MoneyLYFE team member
The biggest impact Aspen Challenge had on me related to our work in the community. The most interaction I’d had with most of Englewood before MoneyLYFE was my drive to and from school and trips to a park for gym class. Through MoneyLYFE, I was able to see the people behind the 44 percent poverty rate, which is what comes to mind when Chicagoans think of Englewood. I was able to interact with community members and grow as a person through our goal to educate people about the benefits of using bank accounts as opposed to currency exchanges that offer checkcashing services. I became more knowledgeable and aware of the struggles facing the people who surround me. At the same time, we had an impact on our community: we helped people learn better ways to manage money. We gave back about $100 that had been taken from people by cashing checks at currency exchanges, and 97 percent of our visitors reported that they learned something new while at our bank fairs. We will continue to work with Englewood to create a more lasting impact. Before participating in Aspen Challenge, I would have never been able to approach a person so easily and attempt to persuade them to visit our bank fair. I would have preferred to simply sit in the corner and hand out snacks to participants. Attending meetings and sending out emails to get banks to send representatives to our bank fairs helped me become more assertive and eager to help provide knowledge about managing finance to people who need it. Because of Aspen Challenge, I was able to approach strangers with this improved confidence and say: “Excuse me, ma’am. Do you know what would look great with that Lindblom shirt? A MoneyLYFE one! Head to our bank fair in the library, and you can find out more about the ridiculous amount of money the currency-exchange business makes from check-cashing fees.”
Alexis Smith is a student at Lindblom Math and Science Academy and an Aspen Challenge participant. IDEAS
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IMPACT: ASPEN CHALLENGE
THE CHALLENGE IN ASPEN By Gabriela Morales
two separate bank fairs and taught a financial-literacy class, all in the span of seven weeks. The sessions at the Ideas Festival made me happy I had not given up on MoneyLYFE: the presenters I listened to never gave up, even though there were tough obstacles to overcome, and they had created some amazing solutions. After leaving Colorado, I wanted to expand MoneyLYFE and teach financial literacy to more elementary schools in Chicago. I took a summer internship with Moneythink, an organization that aims to expand the knowledge of financial literacy to high-school students living in the Chicago neighborhood of Hyde Park. At Moneythink, my job was to give my opinion on the lesson plans: they wanted to know how a high-schooler would feel. I took notes on the plans and applied them to the financial-literacy lessons MoneyLYFE wants to teach elementary students. MoneyLYFE also plans to teach as many financial-literacy classes as we can at our high school, Earle Elementary School, and other neighborhood schools. But it is not only the residents of Englewood who need to know the basics of financial literacy—we want to expand to other communities. And without the invitation from the Aspen Challenge to participate, and the inspiration from the Aspen Ideas Festival, there would have never been MoneyLYFE.
Gabriela Morales is a student at Lindblom Math and Science Academy and an Aspen Challenge participant.
MoneyLYFE takes the stage.
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Riccardo Savi
The Aspen Ideas Festival gave me the chance to meet and talk to different people from all over the world. At the Young Adult Forum, I met people my age from Colorado, Texas, Washington, DC—and even teenagers who had traveled all of the way from South Africa. Seeing the number of teenagers at the Forum made me realize how many connections the Aspen Challenge and the Aspen Institute have all over the world. I was thrilled to be a part of it. At the festival, I attended at least two sessions per day where presenters talked about topics that ranged from American issues such as Black Lives Matter to global matters like teenage brides in Afghanistan. I was most drawn to sessions focusing on different parts of the world, like refugees from Syria. I did not want to attend sessions on issues that were happening in America—I hear about those issues every day when I turn on the news. I was inspired by the determination of so many speakers to solve a problem that they took seriously, especially since seven other classmates and I have started to solve an issue that is important to us in our high-school community: financial literacy. When we first created MoneyLYFE, shortly after the Aspen Challenge opening forum, all I could think to myself was, “How are we, high-school teenagers, even going to be able to try to solve the lack of knowledge on financial literacy when we barely know anything ourselves?” I told myself to push through, go with it, and work with my teammates. Because of our willingness to try, MoneyLYFE hosted
MY OWN CHALLENGE
Dan Bayer
By Daniel Rogers
This past year, I had the privilege to be a presenter at the Aspen Challenge opening forum in Chicago. My job was to challenge students from over 20 high schools to take on the task of understanding the perils of not using a bank for their financial transactions. This event was something of a homecoming for me. I grew up on the South Side of Chicago, and it was always a struggle to realize my potential in spite of the poverty around me. I got on stage as the chief operating officer of a nationally recognized nonprofit focused on financial education, which I came to after a career that took me to institutions like the Department of State, Uber Technologies, and even the Aspen Institute as an ICAP Fellow for high-performing mid-career professionals in foreign affairs. I viewed it as an honor, if not a responsibility, to show people the way to the other side. The way I figured, I was still young enough to be relevant to the kids, and successful enough to be able to speak with authority. If one kid left that room and starting mapping out a better way to deal with their financial challenges, I would have been happy. You can imagine my excitement when the MoneyLYFE team informed me that they had accepted my challenge and went full-steam ahead, making something happen. What they did was downright amazing. Of course, there was another aspect of their ambitions—the financial institutions themselves. Every single bank that agreed to show up to their fair bailed out. Twice. Until one finally agreed. I tried to step in, since many of the banks were funders of the organization where I worked. Tepid would be a gracious word to use for their response. This reminded me of my own struggles as a poor kid growing up in the South Side and the specific role financial institutions played. I vividly recall my first semester of college after leaving the US military and being sucked into an overdraft protection scam where my bank had processed all of my monthly bills—conveniently, a mere hour before my student-aid check cleared. There was also the time I had to talk my skeptical grandmother into co-signing on a private student loan in order to meet the match component of a scholarship I received to take an intensive language course I needed for my language requirement, a requisite for the job I would later get at the State Department. I remember how incredulous I felt at all of this. Before enrolling in college, I served for four and a half years in the US military. In that time, I completed over two years of college coursework in my less-than-ample free time. I’d spend my time waiting to go out on mission in a Special Operations task force in Mosul, kitted up reading a history textbook so I could write the paper after we came back. Yet if I had been unlucky enough to not have a grandmother with a sufficient credit history, I’d have had to drop out of college until I saved up enough to take that course. Crazy, right? You’d think that someone could understand that I took my college studies seriously enough to warrant a few thousand dollars to help me get through that semester. You’d be mistaken. Our banking system isn’t built like that, nor is our higher education system. We throw kids into it and hope they have the presence of mind to handle the rigors of solid education while having to juggle real-life financial difficulties while having no one in their immediate network they can rely on for support or advice. That’s crazy. But you know what’s crazier? Many of them do. There are 400,000 students on the Pell Grant at the nation’s top 100
Rogers
institutions. These are kids who are either way smarter than I am, or who have worked even harder, if not both. They might have to take a job, or take slightly longer to graduate than their peers. But they’ll sure as hell get there. That’s why I decided to start a financial-services firm with some of my old University of Chicago classmates. Our mission is to make sure that kids like the students from MoneyLYFE will always know that someone will be there when they step up to the plate and do their part. Our premise is simple: we will provide value to these sorts of consumers where other financial-services firms either can’t or won’t. This isn’t about being a charity. This is about investing in people who are undervalued in the market. If you tell me that the system doesn’t see value in working with kids like the ones from MoneyLYFE, then I’ll tell you that has more to do with the system being broken. We will do this by leveraging many of the analytical and technological tools of modern finance with some of the models of microfinance and other innovative financial systems around the world. I walked on that stage thinking that all I had to do was show a better way to these students, but I realize that there is still a lot of work to be done. I went there to give those students a challenge, but in the end, I found my own. Daniel Rogers is the founder of A.M. Money and former chief operating officer of Moneythink. IDEAS
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IMPACT: BEZOS FAMILY FOUNDATION
FESTIVALS OF CHANGE The Bezos Scholars Program, a partnership between the Institute and the Bezos Family Foundation, is a year-long leadership development program for high-school students and their teachers. Every year, the program selects 30 exceptional highschool juniors and educators, including five students and one educator from the African Leadership Academy, and brings them to the Aspen Ideas Festival to kick off a year of building leadership skills. Scholars participate in all Ideas activities and Scholar-exclusive roundtable conversations, and return home charged with creating a community change project—a Local Ideas Festival that reflects the intersection of the Scholars’ passions and their communities’ needs. Here is one student’s story.
Bezos Scholars at Aspen Ideas Festival
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Photos courtesy of Bezos Family Foundation
By Shivpriya Sridhar
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IDEAS WINTER | pat @aspen4sale.com
2016/2017
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IMPACT: BEZOS FAMILY FOUNDATION
T
hree years before I landed in Aspen, six students at my high school, Enloe High, in Raleigh, North Carolina, were charged with disorderly conduct. The arrests followed an incident in which students took part in an end-of-year prank involving water balloons. As a freshman, I saw my high school swiftly get labeled in the media a part of the state’s “school-to-prison pipeline.” This inspired me to spend my high-school career working on efforts to dismantle the statewide pipeline and to engage in service opportunities with redemptive and restorative missions. Enloe High is home to a diverse blend of students; when I was a student there (I have since entered the University of North Carolina), I had the chance to study and work to reverse this daunting trend, which affects youth across the state’s juvenile-justice system. My biggest opportunity to address this issue, though, was with the Bezos Scholars Program. On arriving at the 2015 Aspen Ideas Festival, I was blown away by the level of professionalism and passion for change exhibited by speakers from all different walks of life. Given my deep interest in criminal justice and rehabilitative programs—such as Teen Court, a diversion program specific to juveniles with misdemeanor charges—I was drawn to the panels on politics and social justice. A discussion on “The Law and Campus Rape,” led by the former federal district judge Nancy Gertner, was followed by an evening seminar with student activist Clifton Kinnie on police brutality and the systematic targeting of minorities in state criminal-justice systems. Both sessions exposed the necessity of reform within my own community.
North Carolina is one of only two states in the United States that prosecutes 16- and 17-year-olds as adults in the criminal-justice system. This, combined with the presence of more than 800 law-enforcement officers on school campuses in the state, has led to the school-to-prison pipeline that the misdemeanors at Enloe High first made me aware of. When Kinnie shared personal accounts of the increased policing of nonviolent offenses committed by juveniles, I realized that the growing number of misdemeanor cases referred to Teen Court—including simple assault, drug or alcohol possession, and property damage—was not a coincidence. It was the effect of outdated legislation and zerotolerance school policies for misbehavior. In fact, during the 2014-2015 fiscal year, North Carolina schools reported 207,943 short-term suspensions, 1,085 long-term suspensions, and 42 expulsions statewide. During this same period, 94 percent of school-based delinquency complaints in North Carolina were for misdemeanor offenses such as assault, possession of drugs or a weapon, and trespassing while truant. It was time to advocate on behalf of students bearing the brunt of these archaic policies and the increasing rates of suspension, expulsion, and truancy. Taking up the Bezos Scholars Program challenge to create a Local Ideas Festival, my educator, Kevin Shuford, and I aimed to inspire legislation and public discourse around the institutional limitations faced by North Carolina’s juvenile and adult prisoner populations. We hoped to begin to dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline by encouraging greater contributions of state resources to diversion programs.
Sridhar
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•
Invite police into your schools to build relationships through positive interactions.
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Generate a discussion in class. Racism, poverty, educational policies, incarceration: there’s plenty to talk about. Ask yourself, “What is my role in dismantling the school-to-prison pipeline?”
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Include a place-based curriculum. Ecology, economy, history: have students do and explore real things in their own communities.
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Join the “Raise the Age” movement. Fortyeight states don’t charge children as adults. Make it 50.
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Run for the school board. We need members who care about all our children.
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Tutor or mentor a student. Fan the flames of what they love. Support their sense of purpose in the world.
Photos courtesy of Bezos Family Foundation
Get Involved: Do One Thing
Johnson
Motivated by the Bezos Scholars Program, in April 2016 we proudly opened the doors of Raleigh’s State Bar Association, which made a beautiful and fitting backdrop for our own festival. The framework for the event, “Beyond the Bars,” mirrored the Aspen Ideas Festival, featuring panel discussions and significant audience engagement. Participants watched a documentary created by the Duke Center for Documentary Studies and Youth Justice Project; attended monologue performances and panel discussions on prison conditions, mental health in state prisons, and reform movements; and browsed informational booths set up by organizations working with the criminal-justice system. Inmates from a state correctional facility’s art-therapy program created art for Beyond the Bars, and we highlighted the results of our book drive, which raised funds for more than 100 books, textbooks, and study materials for a local nonprofit’s juvenile-diversion program. Allayne Thomas, a junior at Enloe High and community-outreach director for Beyond the Bars, served as the panel moderator for a conversation about reform movements. “At first I was very nervous,” she told me. “But the opportunity to lead a discussion on changes that would affect some of the most vulnerable sections of our population made me more aware of the issues in our community and even more driven to solve them.” The inaugural Beyond the Bars garnered 75 attendees from area schools and organizations, local city government, and even the North Carolina General Assembly. In my eyes, it was a huge success—one that will continue through this school year, thanks to our small founding team at Enloe. “I want to continue to grow our program,” Joey Johnson, a sophomore on the team, said. “I know we can always play a larger role in serving our community. Prison reform is an issue that is all too often ignored, especially in North Carolina, and Beyond the Bars gives us a chance to take up that role and make a change.”
“Prison reform is an issue that is all too often ignored, especially in North Carolina, and Beyond the Bars gives us a chance to take up that role and make a change.” — Joey Johnson Already, Beyond the Bars has made a measurable impact. For example, one of the high-school teachers in attendance, Tara Sivamani, is working with the festival’s team to learn how to incorporate behaviorallearning programs into the classroom. The inspiring discourse and presentations encouraged community members to be active parts of the solution. And they encouraged school representatives to reevaluate the factors behind increased suspension rates and to push for alternative responses like restorative justice. Following younger attendees’ recommendations, the Beyond the Bars team plans to explore mass incarceration, recidivism, and the death penalty next year. School-district representative Rosa Gill has offered increased funding to bolster our efforts. Since graduating, I am helping out and consulting as much as I can from UNC Chapel Hill. With support from the Bezos Scholars Program and our newfound connections, we hope to continue to erode the school-to-prison pipeline in North Carolina.
Shivpriya Sridhar is a freshman at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Bezos Scholar. IDEAS
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IMPACT: HEALTH CARE
Photos courtesy of TeamWork
Team South Carolina discusses their findings.
TEAMWORK, ONE STATE AT A TIME
The Justice and Society Program breaks down barriers in health care. By Meryl Justin Chertoff and Michael Green
I
mproving population health involves a complex web of actors, including federal, state, and local officials; hospital systems; and community groups. But too often, the kind of collaboration that provides communities with the best results gets stuck in silos and mired in turf battles before it can even begin. In 2013, the Institute’s Justice and Society Program, with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, created a pilot project designed to break down barriers to collaboration on state population health. Using our program’s knowledge of how state government works and the foundation’s comprehensive network of population-health resources, we designed the Excellence in State Public Health Law program, later renamed TeamWork: Leadership for Healthy States. Participating teams are led by top state health officials and include state legislators as well as staff from health departments, other state agencies, and governors’ offices. By this fall, 13 states across the country had participated in the program.
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The teams each approached improving population health in remarkably diverse ways, identifying projects and strategies that are particularly relevant to their own states and tackling everything from easyto-accomplish objectives to daunting challenges that have been on the back burner for years. Team Hawaii, for example, worked to improve dental care for Medicaid-eligible children. Team Arkansas increased community access to local exercise facilities by promoting joint-use agreements. And Team New Mexico focused on reducing food deserts in pueblos and tribal lands. According to one team leader, TeamWork offers participants breathing room to accomplish a project—providing technical assistance, dedicated time, and opportunities to convene—and it allows politicians, end-users, and advocates alike to claim a win on critical statewide concerns. This unusual opportunity for interagency and intergovernmental cooperation has given rise to an impressive amount of collaboration, innovation, and enthusiasm.
Photo courtesy of TeamWork
A Team New Mexico member
Team South Carolina is an exciting example. Christian Soura, director of South Carolina’s Department of Health and Human Services, was already familiar with the Institute’s leadership programs through his participation in the Aspen Global Leadership Network’s Liberty Fellowship. With the encouragement of State Senator Thomas Alexander, who later joined the team, Soura began a complex project he had long been hoping to undertake: a collaboration with the state’s Department of Corrections to enroll detainees in Medicaid before their release from incarceration. In South Carolina, as in most states, people lose Medicaid coverage upon incarceration. When inmates, whose rates of chronic and mental illness and substance abuse are markedly higher than those of the general population, are released, the state provides a five-day supply of any regular medication and a one-month prescription for more. But their release date is a highly vulnerable moment both psychologically and medically, and they often leave incarceration with no “medical home” for primary care or any provisions for behavioral or rehabilitation services—let alone transportation to those services. It comes as little surprise, then, that so many former prisoners slip back into cycles of substance abuse, chronic disease, and mental illness—and then back into costly emergency rooms or correctional facilities. Soura and one of his TeamWork partners, South Carolina Department of Corrections Director Bryan Stirling, thought there was a better way: begin the Medicaid reenrollment process early enough that inmates leave prison with a Medicaid card and a medical home. The two set about redesigning Medicaid’s interactions with their state’s Department of Corrections. Others on Team South Carolina laid the groundwork within their respective branches of government for legislative and regulatory cooperation. Along the way, Team South Carolina made a surprising discovery: as “guests of the state,” some prisoners erroneously remained on Medicaid rolls, meaning the state was continuing to pay monthly premiums, even though the prisoners were being treated in the prison health system and had no access to Medicaid services. By disenrolling those with coverage during their incarceration, the team was able to cover the project’s startup costs.
Team members also used the reenrollment process as an opportunity to assess the need for insurance services within the inmate’s immediate family, a valuable step toward reintegrating former inmates into their communities. TeamWork was an essential part of the success of Team South Carolina’s project. “Our typical workday is consumed by the tactical—the next meeting, the next email, or the next phone call to return,” Soura says. “TeamWork’s dedicated time to work with other agencies on common health-focused priorities has renewed staff commitment while meaningfully benefiting society.” That staff commitment is serious. Team South Carolina’s Stirling, of the Department of Corrections, and Beth Hutto, of the Department of Health and Human Services, report that at both departments, staff members who were not on the team but learned about the project volunteered to put in extra hours. “It made them excited to come to work,” Hutto says. Stirling adds, “There’s a genuine desire among our correctional officers and all our support staff to help offenders stay on their feet once they return to the community. This project raises the odds that reentry will be successful.” During TeamWork’s three-year run, we’ve learned some important lessons about what leads to success. The Aspen method of inquiry is one. Early readings on political philosophy, such as “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”—a short story familiar to those who’ve taken the Justice and Society or Executive seminars—signaled that TeamWork was focused on creating solutions based on shared values. Additional focuses on collective impact and systems leadership pushed participants to expand their visions for intergovernmental collaboration and public and private engagement. Leadership retreats and regular in-state team meetings also helped team members think creatively about complex population-health challenges in their states, rather than simply reacting to the latest emergency. A little collegial competition between teams also provided some healthy motivation. And TeamWork’s “health in all policies” approach meant that a state agency without the word “health” in its name could get in on the game, enabling crosscutting collaboration to incorporate population-health concerns into state policy decisions and strategic planning government-wide—a key element of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Culture of Health vision. At the Justice and Society Program, we also learned a few things. Collaborations to achieve health in all policies need not involve the usual health department suspects. In fact, as demonstrated by South Carolina’s partnership between health and corrections departments, and by several other TeamWork projects, working across agencies that rarely share policy agendas can dramatically reduce the risk of battles over jurisdiction and funding. This opens up interesting possibilities for collaborations between health agencies and transportation, environment, and public-safety agencies. We also learned how silos in state government can hinder smart policy. The TeamWork model engages the elected branches of government in a once-commonplace way—through a focus on a shared mission to provide more effective, efficient health care services. As Team Hawaii’s leader, David Sakamoto, observed at his cohort’s conclusion: “We witnessed a shift as we worked with legislators, from oversight to partnership and participation. It’s a different way of engaging relationships.” Former Washington Governor Christine Gregoire, a member of the Excellence in State Public Health Law Advisory Committee, agreed: “In the future, this may be the only way we get things done.” Connecting over shared values brought team members back to basics and to the moral and professional commitments that led them to enter public service in the first place. TeamWork’s approach to leadership development has yielded several promising lessons—ones that can be adopted and adapted by state and local governments to address a variety of critical health and social challenges.
Meryl Justin Chertoff is the executive director of the Justice and Society Program; Michael Green is the program’s associate director. IDEAS
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Steve Johnson
IMPACT: CNAY
CHAMPIONS FOR CHANGE Since its inception in 2013, the Center for Native American Youth’s Champions for Change program at the Institute has recognized five extraordinary Native youth leaders each year. Champions come from tribal and urban Indian communities throughout the country and, despite their youth, bring a wealth of experience as change agents on the ground. CNAY introduces them to a wide range of partners who are eager to sustain their efforts. Champions have co-authored powerful op-eds for national publications like The Washington Post and The New York Times, shared a stage with President Obama before an audience of hundreds of elected tribal leaders, and shed light on important issues like Native youth suicide prevention and disparities in oral health care in Indian Country. Most important, Champions create a ripple effect within their communities that moves young Indian people to action. By Amber Richardson 46
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IMPACT: CNAY TATIANA TICKNOR
Oglala Lakota 2014 Champion for Change Keith Martinez grew up around the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. There, poverty and a lack of educational resources like libraries and computer labs placed him and his peers at a disadvantage in academic competitiveness. Martinez completed his last two years of high school at Scarsdale High in New York state through the Student Transfer Education Plan (STEP), an educational-exchange program for talented students. It was through STEP that Martinez realized for the first time just how far behind he was. “I hated the idea of Native students being behind just because of where they come from,” he says. Martinez took advantage of tutoring and opportunities provided by his school and host family to catch up to his classmates and graduate with a 3.7 GPA. He is now both a Presidential and Gates Millennium Scholar attending Villanova University, where he is the recipient of the Harry S. Truman Scholarship. Seeing education as the primary way for his community to overcome the myriad challenges facing it, Martinez became a co-founding member of the Youth Advisory Board of Lakota Children’s Enrichment, a nonprofit organization committed to empowering Native youth on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. The group engages students in community-service initiatives and increases educational resources. As its Youth Advisory board chair for two years, Martinez raised money, cultivated partnerships, led youth summits, organized toy drives, and hosted writing and art competitions to engage, support, and motivate his peers. He also led the group in providing more than 5,000 books to the Boys and Girls Club library in his community. It was these efforts that gained him recognition as a Champion for Change. For Martinez, the most helpful part of being a Champion has been the network. “I was doing the work, but CNAY helped me get connected to larger opportunities for LCE to grow, and getting more recognition got more youth involved,” he says. 48
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Teddy McCullough
KEITH MARTINEZ
As a high-school student, Tatiana Ticknor felt that negative stereotypes of Native youth created an unwelcoming learning environment, keeping her Alaska Native classmates from identifying with their own cultures and thriving in school. She began to speak out at leadership summits and conventions across the state. Ticknor also began taking more initiative to learn and teach the Dena’ina language in order to inspire other Native youth. She started by volunteering to help her cheda (grandmother) teach a weekly language class, and shared words and phrases through social media. Though Ticknor says the language is difficult, her Facebook videos for the “Dena’ina Word of the Day” make people laugh and want to learn more. Unbeknownst to her, youth throughout Alaska had seen Ticknor’s public displays of cultural involvement as brave and inspiring. (Ticknor is also a member of three Native dance groups and is training to compete in the Native Youth Olympics in Anchorage.) Soon, young people began asking her about getting involved in activities like her high school’s Native Leadership Council. She was also named a Community Doer by the First Alaskans Institute, a nonprofit that advocates for Alaska Natives and fosters positive relationships among communities. When she applied to become a Champion at age 15, “I was just learning that being myself was being a leader,” Ticknor says. “I really wanted to make something better for my community.” “When you don’t have opportunities, it’s hard to do what you want to do because you don’t have people to go to for advice,” Ticknor adds. She says that the program “really opens doors. If I never did this, I wouldn’t be doing all the things I’m doing today.”
Vince Schilling
Yup’ik, Tlingit, Dena’ina 2015 Champion for Change
Lifestyle. Luxury. Legacy.
WE’LL FIND YOURS.
CHRIS FLYNN
ASHLEY CHOD
DEAN GRESK
SCOTT DAVIDSON
MONICA VIALL
LAUREN BULLARD
TONY DILUCIA
PJ BORY
CARLIE UMBARGER
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IMPACT: CNAY VANESSA GOODTHUNDER
ANITA FINEDAY White Earth Band of Ojibwe Managing Director, Casey Family Programs Indian Child Welfare Program As a former tribal judge and the current managing director of Casey Family Programs’ Indian Child Welfare Program, Anita Fineday has long understood the mission and vision behind the Center for Native 50
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Goodthunder says that in addition to resources and connections, being a Champion for Change has been important in inspiring her peers. “Native youth need to know that historical trauma is not normal,” she says. “We need people on the ground, helping them find their voices, building their confidence, and giving them the resources to help them become who they want to be.”
American Youth. In 2012, Fineday initiated the partnership by asking if CNAY would dedicate one of its quarterly policy and resource roundtables to child welfare in Indian Country. “Children’s issues are usually not at the top of very many people’s agendas,” she says. “When Champions participate in our events, people always say that the best thing about the meeting is having the youth speak. They always steal the show.” Fineday says that before CNAY, there was a “complete void” of organizations able to provide direct connections to Native youth. “There are so few programs that work directly with Native youth, aside from having them attend an annual conference,” she explains. “Our program often coordinates informational presentations between Native youth, tribal leaders, Hill staffers, and members of Congress to provide insight on the state of youth in Indian Country. The connection to Champions for Change has allowed youth to see tribal leaders in action, gain valuable experience as advocates and young professionals, and give voice to critical issues affecting their communities.” While it’s essential to shed light on disparities, Fineday recognizes the power of uplifting positive stories as well. She says that the youth voice is a critical component in making the case to foundations and others that “it’s not all doom and gloom in Indian Country.” In fact, according to Fineday, “The development of Native youth as advocates, Champions, and leaders is a public-health strategy. It’s a public-health model of resiliency. This is how you foster resiliency in your communities.”
Amber Richardson is the program coordinator for the Center for Native American Youth at the Aspen Institute.
Dan Bayer
During a community-outreach trip in Minnesota, CNAY witnessed Vanessa Goodthunder’s work as a leader at Dakota Wicohan (Dakota Way of Life), a nonprofit dedicated to revitalizing the Dakota language so it will live beyond its five remaining first-language speakers. Goodthunder speaks passionately about the ways in which continuing important traditions has helped members of her tribal community recover from the historical trauma of being forbidden to connect with and express their identities as indigenous peoples. She believes that the Dakota language itself has healing power, and at 18 years old she has dedicated her life to learning and teaching it. In addition to facilitating Dakota-language classes for tribal youth of all ages, she created a peermentoring group to connect Native youth from all four Dakota communities around learning and practicing Dakota language and culture. Goodthunder is a skilled connector, creating links among concepts, resources, and people to share knowledge and inspire action. “When I first came to DC, I didn’t really connect Lower Sioux to DC and didn’t think DC made a huge impact on my life or community,” Goodthunder says. During Champion Recognition Week, however, she met with Interior Department Secretary Sally Jewell, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, and members of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs. “The committee wanted a youth perspective,” she says. “Instead of telling people who I am and just having them clap for me, they were asking me to share some of the ideas I have for helping my community. There was action.”
Photos courtesy of CNAY
Cansayapi (Lower Sioux Indian Community) 2016 Champion for Change
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PARTNER CONTENT: THE ROLEX AWARDS FOR ENTERPRISE
A N AWA R D F O R T H E F U T U R E
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IDEAS
AWARDS TYPICALLY RECOGNIZE achievements
why the Rolex Awards are focused on independent
in a particular field, honoring those who have
researchers, who have little or no access to
contributed excellent ideas to society or
traditional funding. Rather than reward recognized
had an impact on the world. But the Rolex
success, the Rolex Awards seek to identify and
Award for Enterprise, while honoring brilliance,
encourage new individual endeavors.
acknowledges a different kind of excellence:
Rolex Laureates have created technologies
potential, determination, and creativity. Designed
that improve lives, saved endangered ecosystems,
to foster a spirit of enterprise and to advance
explored new frontiers on the planet, and
human knowledge and well-being, the Rolex
pioneered advances in science and health. Since
Awards for Enterprise identify and invest in
1976, over 140 winners have transformed people’s
exceptional people around the world who play
lives and stimulated new ways of thinking about
pioneering roles in society.
public problems. Laureates have implemented
This November, five Laureates and five Young
projects in more than 60 countries. They
Laureates with groundbreaking projects to foster a
have helped communities from camel herders
better world were announced at the Rolex Awards
in Mauritania to boat-building craftsmen in
for Enterprise’s commemorative 40th anniversary
Bangladesh. They have developed technologies,
ceremony in Los Angeles.
like a smartphone for the visually impaired, food-
Created in 1976 to mark the 50th anniversary
cooling systems in Nigeria, and stoves powered
of the Rolex Oyster—the first waterproof watch—
by rice husks in the Philippines. And they have
the awards are designed not to celebrate the past
protected ecosystems and preserved cultures, like
but to lay the foundation for a better future. From
the ancient city of Petra, Jordan; prehistoric cave
their creation, the awards have aimed to have
paintings in Europe; the Amazon forest in Brazil;
resonance and impact throughout the world. That’s
and natural parks in Russia.
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Rolex/Joan Bardeletti
THE ROLEX AWARDS FOR ENTERPRISE SHOWCASE GROUNDBREAKING WORK AROUND THE WORLD .
A Kenyan woman has her sight tested at Peek Vision, the organization begun by Laureate Andrew Bastawrous.
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PARTNER CONTENT: THE ROLEX AWARDS FOR ENTERPRISE
Rolex/Mark Latzel
Young Laureate Joseph Cook extracts bacteria and minerals from a water sample.
2016 LAUREATES ANDREW BASTAWROUS UNITED KINGDOM Transform eye care in sub-Saharan Africa using a smartphone-based, portable eye-examination system, Peek Vision, to screen thousands of people. Establish a center of excellence and training.
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KERSTIN FORSBERG PERU
CONOR WALSH IRELAND
Scale up efforts to protect endangered manta rays in northern Peru by helping fishermen pursue ecotourism as an alternative source of income, and through outreach programs for local communities.
Tackle stroke disability and other mobility problems by developing an “exosuit,” a soft robotic suit that enables patients to walk more easily and monitors, analyzes, and gradually trains their muscles to return to healthy patterns.
Johan Reinhard, who won a Rolex Award for his project to explore sacred mountains in the Andes, was a freelance anthropologist with little funding or institutional backing before becoming a Laureate. He went on to pioneer the fields of high-altitude archeology and sacred geography and to unearth an Incan mummy, the 500-year-old Inca “Ice Maiden” dubbed “Juanita.” “The award set the stage for everything,” Reinhard says. “It gave me the ability to work on my own in Peru for three full years and to be recognized in archeological circles.” Rolex Laureates have included a Parisian taxi driver who became a world-renowned authority on Nepalese ground beetles; a Mexican biochemist who became an expert in his country’s rich history of folk music; a Swiss lawyer who journeyed to Brazil to study birds and planted millions of trees along the way; and an American amateur scientist who made monitoring atmospheric data possible for schoolchildren, helping to foster a spirit of curiosity and scientific exploration. “We initiated the Rolex Awards for Enterprise out of a conviction that we had to take responsibility as a company to improving life on our planet,” said the late Andre J. Heiniger, founder of the Rolex Awards and former chairman of Rolex, “and to foster values we cherish: quality, ingenuity, determination, and above all, a spirit of enterprise.” When the first Rolex Awards were granted, anyone with a project that tackled
science, exploration, or the environment was invited to apply for a prize of 50,000 Swiss francs. To the surprise of the selection committee, the awards attracted more than 3,000 applications for the five winning slots. The program has only expanded in scope since it named the first Laureates. Until 1998, the awards ceremony was held in Geneva, Switzerland, but since the 1990s, given the awards’ growing international stature, the ceremony has moved from city to city around the world. Since 2000, Rolex Awards ceremonies have been held in New York, Tokyo, Paris, Singapore, Dubai, New Delhi, and London. Laureates receive a generous cash prize to help fund their projects and a Rolex chronometer. They also benefit from an international publicity campaign and have access to the network of former Laureates and jury members for advice and mentorship. In 2010, Rolex introduced a new “Young Laureates” segment of the award, aimed at men and women between the ages of 18 and 30 who are tackling major challenges with the Rolex signature spirit of enterprise. The new awards will encourage young people to develop the skills they need at a critical stage of their careers to meet the challenges of the 21st century. “The future of the planet is in the hands of the next generation,” Bertrand Gros, chairman of Rolex, says. “Rolex wanted to specifically support young people who have the vision to improve life on Earth.” The Selection Committee is composed of a panel of specialized individuals with
SONAM WANGCHUK INDIA
VRENI HÄUSSERMANN CHILE/GERMANY
Remedy severe seasonal water scarcity in the western Himalayas by building artificial glaciers—“ice stupas,” shaped like Buddhist monuments—to store water that will irrigate and reforest desert land.
“We initiated the Rolex Awards for Enterprise out of a conviction that we had to take responsibility as a company to improving life on our planet, and to foster values that we cherish: quality, ingenuity, determination, and above all, a spirit of enterprise.” —Andre J. Heiniger
Discover the unknown life at the bottom of Chilean Patagonia’s fjords at three remote locations by combining exploration and science, and create support for conservation through public outreach.
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PARTNER CONTENT: THE ROLEX AWARDS FOR ENTERPRISE
©Rolex/Reto Albertalli
Young Laureate Sarah Toumi (left) plants seedlings.
2016 YOUNG LAUREATES
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JOSEPH COOK UNITED KINGDOM
OSCAR EKPONIMO NIGERIA
CHRISTINE KEUNG UNITED STATES
Investigate the Greenland ice sheet to discover how immense microbial populations survive in the polar and glacial ice caps and study their effects on Earth’s vital systems, including climate, and value to humanity.
Address food poverty and alleviate hunger in Nigeria through a cloudbased app that monitors supermarket products approaching the end of their shelf life and generates notifications for discounted items for consumers and charities.
End uncontrolled toxic pollution of soil and water in rural northwestern China by working with doctors and industry to reduce harmful waste and by empowering women to act as environmental stewards.
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The region of Greenland where Cook is conducting his project.
“The future of the planet is in the hands of the next generation, which is why Rolex began specifically supporting young people who have the vision to improve life on Earth.”
Courtesy of Joseph Cook
—Bertrand Gros
JUNTO OHKI JAPAN
SARAH TOUMI FRANCE/TUNISIA
Bridge the gap between the world’s 126 sign languages through a crowdsourced online sign-language dictionary that will be a global platform for all signs, improving communication among hearing-impaired people from different countries.
Fight increasing desertification in Tunisia caused by climate change through reforestation and crops suited to low rainfall, providing new income opportunities to rural communities.
international stature and reputation, which helps guarantee that award winners meet stringent criteria. This year, for example, the jury members include an Olympic champion, a Nobel Prize–winner, a celebrated underwater photographer, and an astronaut who is also a best-selling author. Judges look at the applicants’ spirit of enterprise: Does the applicant show tenacity in undertaking a bold and challenging project? Originality—looking at whether the project represents a new way of tackling at a problem—is also key. And of course, so is impact: Will the project have a wide impact on a community, on society, on the world? Today, the Rolex Awards support pioneering work in five areas: applied technology, exploration and discovery, cultural heritage, science and health, and the environment. For the 2016 Rolex Awards, 2,322 people representing 144 nationalities applied. For the first time, the highest number of applicants, 24 percent, were from Africa. For the 40th anniversary of the Rolex Awards, the Laureates once again prove that with the right amount of determination, passion, and commitment, anyone can change anything. IDEAS
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Photos courtesy of ANDE
ASPEN NETWORK OF DEVELOPMENT ENTREPRENEURS
260 member organizations, based in 35 countries, working in emerging-market economies around the world with a single shared mission: spur entrepreneurship to help the poor.
M
ember organizations of the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs believe that small and growing businesses will be the best drivers of prosperity for the poor in developing countries—creating jobs and providing basic products and services that are often lacking in emerging economies. With 20 staff members spread across seven countries, ANDE supports thousands of entrepreneurs in some of the most challenging economies in the world. Like many successful start-ups, ANDE began with an idea—over cocktails. It was 2006 and leaders of organizations like TechnoServe, Acumen, and Endeavor had noticed a stark lack of collaboration among organizations that aim to help small businesses in developing countries. These nonprofits were making pioneering investments: supporting water and sanitation businesses in India to increase access to clean water, training managers on dairy farms in Nairobi to produce safe and high-quality milk
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products, building technology-based education businesses in Brazil to increase access to low-cost educational services. They established satellite offices and hired local staff in emerging markets rather than send in American consultants to address local problems. These nonprofits had similar goals and shared similar values. But they weren’t working together. The leaders of these groups included Peter Reiling, an executive vice president at the Aspen Institute who at the time served as CEO of TechnoServe. Involved in the Aspen community since 1998, Reiling knew the power of the Institute’s neutral gathering spaces. In 2006, he hosted a meeting at the Institute’s Aspen campus to find common ground among the organizations, recruiting attendees from global development nonprofits, government agencies, Fortune 500 corporations, and leading philanthropic institutions. “We sought out individuals who would be willing to ask, ‘What would it take to have greater impact together?’” Reiling says.
Promotora Social Mexico joined ANDE in 2012. The group invests in promising social enterprises like Habvita, which offers housing construction services for lowincome areas. Here, Promotora CEO Juan Carlos Domenzain celebrates a family’s new house.
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ASPEN NETWORK OF DEVELOPMENT ENTREPRENEURS
Ending poverty starts with creativity—with an entrepreneur who builds a business that serves customers, creates jobs, and raises incomes. The microfinance movement was gathering steam, and the leaders who would become the founders of ANDE believed that the development of competitive businesses was a critically important response to the stubborn fact of global poverty. They still do. Ending poverty starts with creativity, with an entrepreneur who builds a business that serves customers, creates jobs, and raises incomes—all of which address critical social problems. With seed funding from a handful of leading philanthropic institutions, the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs was born, envisioned as a membership organization whose dues would fuel its expansion. The initial funding allowed for 34 founding members. Philanthropic funding continues to play a key role in delivering ANDE’s trainings, research, and events, and ANDE supplements that funding with annual dues from more than 250 members. “We’ve made strides toward achieving greater economic equality in emerging markets,” says Randall Kempner, executive director of ANDE. “But we have many peaks yet to climb.” As ANDE has grown, its mission has stayed focused on helping entrepreneurs overcome obstacles to growth in difficult business environments through collective action. The organization serves as an advocate, researcher, adviser, trainer, and promoter for small businesses. ANDE has also diversified. Small emerging-market investors and researchers work alongside big corporations like Nestle and General Mills to develop initiatives that strengthen small farms, manufacturers, and other small businesses. More than 35 percent of ANDE’s members are based in emerging markets. ANDE now has staff based in Johannesburg, Lagos, Mexico City, Nairobi, New Delhi, São Paulo, and Washington, DC. The member organizations advise businesses like Servals, which provides clean-energy products, including lowcost, energy-efficient cook stoves to poor rural populations in India. Heart Social Enterprise, a former ANDE member, worked directly with Foodtents, a social enterprise that develops micro-agribusinesses to address food-security challenges in South Africa. Dramco Tooling, a manufacturing company in South Africa received advisory services from Swisscontact, an ANDE member, for example. ANDE researchers are leading the way in understanding the benefits that a business accelerator might have on, say, a femaleled start-up in Lagos, by providing training courses in financial management and branding. They host a “Metrics from the Ground Up” conference each summer at the Institute’s headquarters in Washington, so ANDE members can better measure their social 60
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An employee on the Dramco tooling floor in Cape Town, South Africa. ANDE member Swisscontact provides business-development services to the organization.
and environmental impacts. At the ANDE Annual Conference in September each year, more than 200 members gather to discuss key challenges that impede small-business growth and how to overcome them—like, for example, how members can better recruit and train local talent in emerging cities like Nairobi. Andrew Stern, the executive director of the Global Development Incubator and a founder of ANDE, says he is amazed at how much traction the network has gained over the past ten years: “In our original business plan, we thought in a few years we might convince 50 organizations to join. Today, there are more than 250! We couldn’t have conceived of that level of interest at the time and from such a diverse set of actors.” The global organizations ANDE has attracted are no less than a movement—a movement that is trailblazing ways to address the social and environmental issues of our time. Each organization brings a unique approach and diverse perspective to the table. Below are just four.
LIFESAVING HEALTH CARE TECHNOLOGY The Lemelson Foundation, a founding member of ANDE, is a private family foundation that promotes invention to solve social and economic challenges. The foundation creates a pipeline of inventors in both the United States and developing countries who have the ability and knowledge to tackle entrenched issues in creative ways. Unlike many other ANDE members who focus solely on investing in start-ups, The Lemelson Foundation is seeding the technology
Mama Rosie (center), a community leader in Cape Town, South Africa, works at Foodtents, an organization that provides healthy food to rural populations. Foodtents received support from Heart Social Enterprise, a former ANDE member.
that businesses are built on from the bottom up. While others focus on developing the latest software or service-based innovations, The Lemelson Foundation is one of a few organizations willing to make investments in hardware businesses in developing countries. For example, in 2009, the foundation’s longtime grantee VentureWell began supporting Rebecca Richards-Kortum and Maria Oden, the founders of Beyond Traditional Borders, Rice University’s hands-on engineering, design, and education program. Along with a group of undergraduate students at Rice and pediatricians and nurses at Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital, Richards-Kortum and Oden developed an affordable and easyto-use version of a bubble CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) machine that could function in a resource-constrained environment. A CPAP machine improves the survival rates of premature babies by using a pressurized mix of air and oxygen to prevent an infant’s lungs from collapsing when they exhale. In areas in Malawi that have the technology, survival rates of premature babies jumped from 24 to 65 percent, according to one clinical evaluation. The device was licensed to a company called 3rd Stone Design and marketed under the name Pumani, or “breathe easy” in the local Chichewa language. With funding from The Lemelson Foundation, Richards-Kortum and Oden collaborated with colleagues at the University of Malawi Polytechnic, the University of Malawi Medical School, and Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital to establish a biomedical-engineering program to improve health care through invention. A key part of
the program focuses on equipping students in Malawi with the skills to create and implement the “Nursery of the Future”—a comprehensive set of affordable yet highly effective neonatal technologies for under-resourced hospitals. The goal is to train students to invent suitable technologies in order to save millions of babies’ lives each year. “With interventions like these,” says Kenneth Turner, a program officer with The Lemelson Foundation, “Malawi can support the creation of new technologies that meet local health needs rather than importing technological solutions from Western countries.” High-quality biomedical-engineering education is vital to drive these efforts—efforts that, in line with ANDE’s mission, are creating local knowledge and expertise. By investing in students, The Lemelson Foundation is building the future workforce of Malawi while encouraging homegrown problem-solving. Since 2008, ANDE has worked with the foundation to find and invest in local partners around the world and to promote “impact-inventing,” the idea that new hardware solutions and inventions can transform the way the poor live in developing countries, for the better.
FIGHTING INEQUALITY THROUGH INVESTMENT Promotora Social México is a Mexican venture-philanthropy organization whose goal is to improve the quality of life of the country’s most vulnerable groups through investments in sustainable education, health care, and economic-development businesses. PSM joined the ANDE network in 2012. With a portfolio IDEAS
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A baby born in a hospital using a Pumani CPAP device.
The GrowthAfrica team understands the complexities of customer segmentation in Africa and how to design a supply chain with local realities in mind. of 21 businesses, it selects people and organizations with vision and proven track records. That includes Virtual Market, a social enterprise founded by close friends Andrés González-Cuevas and Jorge Espíndola that addresses the challenges mom-and-pop shops face from the increasing competition of larger convenience-store chains. By offering their customers technological advances, educational resources, and mentorship to help them run their businesses more effectively, Virtual Market ensures that suppliers have instant access to deeply detailed information about how their product performs, like sell-out rates, market share, distribution, price strategy, and promotional effectiveness. Suppliers can access a number of tools designed to improve their product’s performance and to make supply-chain and trade-marketing processes more efficient. On 62
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average, each store experiences a more than 23 percent increase in sales and 20 percent more customer traffic thanks to more efficient bill and payment processing. “Unlike a typical investor,” says Patricia Desentis, a PSM analyst, “social impact is at the core of our investment principles.” With the help of ANDE and its network, PSM has been able to cull best practices from like-minded investors looking to transform the way marginalized communities live, and it has allocated more than $90 million in equity investments, loans, and grants to high-impact health, education, and development projects.
Left: courtesy of The Lemelson Foundation
ACCELERATING BUSINESS GROWTH IN INDIA Villgro, India’s oldest social-enterprise incubator, nurtures early stage for-profit enterprises in India, focusing on start-ups with the potential to change the lives of millions of urban and rural poor in India. Since 2001, Villgro has worked with more than 100 enterprises, which have gone on to raise over $13 million in follow-on funding and to change the lives of 15 million citizens with their products and services. Programs led by Villgro are designed to address the major issues early stage social enterprises face most often: access to financing, talent, and mentorship. When a start-up converts from an informal setting to a professional setup that turns a profit, it needs to professionalize—or die. In India, many entrepreneurs don’t know where to go for nonmonetary support or a seasoned mentor. Sometimes what’s most useful is a connection to an influential network. This is especially relevant in social-impact work, where there is a lot of passion and creativity, but where there are also entrepreneurs struggling to make their ventures commercially viable. Women at an extraction plant in Hyderabad, India, work with copper chains to create Servals’ clean-energy products.
The companies in Villgro’s portfolio strive to find that balance. For example, there is Uniphore, a company that develops speechrecognition solutions, serves Fortune 500 companies, and also assists rural populations and communities with low literacy rates. Working with World Health Partners, Uniphore’s software system has an information portal that health workers can use through spoken conversation. The speech-recognition software that powers the system resembles a conversation similar to one a patient would have with a doctor or nurse. It’s also personalized to local languages and dialects. The Indian start-up is having a marked impact on the community—while turning a profit. For Villgro, the ANDE network has played a key role in gathering organizations operating in similar environments but based all over the globe. For example, at the 2015 ANDE Annual Conference, the Villgro team attended a “fail fair,” where participants shared their mistakes for others to learn from—and shared new ideas, too. “The idea of business incubation is still relatively new,” says Aditi Seshadri, of Villgro. “There is a great need to learn from others.” ANDE has also helped Villgro gain credibility in the eyes of international organizations, leading to increased access to co-investors. During Villgro’s expansion phase, ANDE networks in Vietnam and Kenya provided access to potential investors and talent—quickly.
TRANSFORMING AFRICAN FARMING Since its inception in 2002, GrowthAfrica has had one thing in mind: support the rise of a promising continent with a growing, curious, and ambitious middle class by offering tailored programs, strategic advice, and access to local and international investors. GrowthAfrica was founded by two idealistic entrepreneurs who experienced firsthand the issues that keep African entrepreneurs up at night. Whether partners need someone who understands their customers’ needs, are struggling to tweak their products, or are overwhelmed by new regulations, GrowthAfrica empathizes with and meets the challenges of building a small business in a rapidly emerging market. While Africa is advancing quickly, it’s doing so in ways that are unique to its people, culture, and customs. Rather than imposing Western templates, the advisory firm delivers tailored advice and assistance to entrepreneurs. For instance, the GrowthAfrica team understands the complexities of customer segmentation in Africa and how to design a supply chain with local realities in mind. Being an ANDE member has allowed GrowthAfrica to better serve partner companies and to stay connected to a broader network—in Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Ethiopia, and beyond. The team has been able to to share stories of how to recruit, develop, and retain its own talent while helping clients do the same. “ANDE has also helped the firm access potential resources with a genuine interest in a unique African approach,” says Johnni Kjelsgaard, the founder of GrowthAfrica. Ultimately, being a part of ANDE is being a part of a community of people who understand each other, even if they appear quite different on the surface. ANDE members share a similar strategic approach: provide local business solutions to fight poverty—whether they are based in Malaysia or Mombasa. Kate McElligott is the director of strategic development at ANDE. IDEAS
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THE IDEAS FORUM
TAKES OVER
THOUGHT LEADERS VISIT WASHINGTON, DC, TO DISCUSS TOPICS FROM POKÉMON TO PAKISTAN.
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For the eighth year, the nation’s thought leaders, elected officials, experts, and innovators arrived at the Washington Ideas Forum for tough and dynamic conversations with moderators from the Institute’s partners at The Atlantic. From the heart of the nation’s capital, the Forum tackled politics, race, justice, education, technology, and more. This year, the Forum spanned a full week, with events in venues across DC. In addition to the rich discussions, the invited audience could watch the presidential debate with Beltway insiders, catch a film screening, or enjoy networking nights with the nation’s top minds. Visit the Washington Ideas Week page to learn more. aspeninstitute.org/tag/washington-ideas-forum
PHOTOGRAPHY BY MAX TAYLOR
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THE WASHINGTON IDEAS FORUM
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“This museum is a complement to other Smithsonian museums, which give you different portals into what it means to be an American. It is this deep, rich look at African American culture and history—allowing America to confront its tortured racial past. But it’s also saying: ‘This is the story of us all. This is the story that profoundly shaped our notions of freedom and citizenship.’ Candidly, it claims its Americanism.’” —Lonnie Bunch, founding director of the National Museum of African American History
Leigh Vogel
and Culture
“It’s not just that you shoot a man who is unarmed; it’s that you handcuff him when he’s dying. There’s something about it that is so unforgivably inhumane. One of the terrible things about race in this country is that there’s a sense in which blackness isn’t really seen as fully human, and that’s why these things are happening. That’s why a man who is dying is handcuffed. That’s why a boy who is dead is left on the street for hours. It makes me wonder: What has happened to the part of us that is good?” —Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, author of Americanah and Half of a Yellow Sun among other works
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/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// “It’s a new frontier. You’re putting a digital reality onto the physical world. You’re putting digital things into real space. It changes human behavior. People actually change where they go. They change the direction that they go to work in the morning. It causes crowds to gather in certain places. We leverage that addictiveness and fun of games in an app that leads you outside and that could take place in the park and throughout the city.” —John Hanke, the CEO of Niantic, which created Pokémon Go
“If you look at the dating sites that came before Bumble, they marketed to the desperate, to the people who were lonely and hopeless. They preyed on that. When someone used it, they felt this sense of shame and embarrassment. Apps like Bumble are a benefit to society, giving you access to people who you might not otherwise have the chance to connect with. We have shortcuts in everything that we do. I would never advise anybody to take a shortcut to love, but to an introduction, why not?” —Whitney Wolfe, CEO of Bumble
“This idea of a bringing all the countries in Europe together—the European project—really is a visionary idea. But they made a big mistake. They thought that by having a single currency, they would move further along toward that idea, and they pushed economic integration before they had the political institutions to make it work and before there was enough solidarity to create those political institutions. And the consequences have been very, very serious.” —Joe Stiglitz, Nobel Prize–winning economist
“The United States has a tendency of using Pakistan whenever it’s required and then ditching it. This is the perception of the people of Pakistan. I am pro-Pakistan only. I look after Pakistan’s interests. All my decisions are in the interest of Pakistan. But within that, I believe the interests of the United States are very much in the interest of Pakistan. So we have to have good relations with the United States.” —Pervez Musharraf, former president of Pakistan
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“If you take Zika in a vacuum apart from its effects on pregnant women, it’s a relatively mild disease: 80 percent of people don’t know that they’re infected. They’re completely without symptoms. But when you add to it the issue of pregnant women, it can be overwhelmingly devastating. Florida is like the Grand Central Station of travelers that come from the global south. It has the right climate, mosquitos, and perfect storm to have local transmission.” —Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
“People don’t want to know anything about their food. People don’t want to know something died to make that burger you’re eating. Someone picked that piece of fruit for your salad. Most of the responsibility is on restaurants. But consumers should understand that food should be more expensive—for the farmer, for the environment, for the many costs that are just hidden.” —David Chang, chef and founder of Momofuku
“I am an eternal optimist, and that’s what makes me a civil rights lawyer. I don’t think you can do civil rights work and not be optimistic about the fact that this country has had an imperfect yet inexorable march toward justice and progress.” —Vanita Gupta, principal deputy assistant attorney general and head of the Civil Rights Division at the US Department of Justice
“With a personal-car ownership model, our vehicles sit idle about 95 percent of the time. They’re only active about 5 percent of the time. That’s a massive capital inefficiency, and we can do much better as a society.” —John Krafcik, CEO of the Self-Driving Car Project
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////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// “The relationship between the car and individual is going to evolve. Driverless cars are going to enable disabled citizens, the elderly, to have entirely new ways to get around. Driverless cars will facilitate an even stronger push for ridesharing culture. Driverless technology will extend into transit, into trucking. It’s going to be one of the most dynamic transformations we have ever seen: 94 percent of the crashes that occur are due to human factors. You will see substantial declines in the number of crashes as a result of autonomous technology.” —Anthony Foxx, US secretary of transportation
“I make no apology for trying to reach out and find out if there is a way to achieve the political settlement that everybody agrees is the only way to solve the problem of Syria. You find people constantly saying that there is no military solution. Well, if there is no military solution, what is the political solution? It’s the job of the secretary of state and diplomats to try and do that, as tough as it may be. And it is tough.” —John Kerry, US secretary of state
“This idea that Washington is broken, and that the world is set up more against you than for you in certain demographics, is very real. Trump has tapped into a lot of voter discontent. And to the extent that one represents the status quo, people are ready to abandon you, and I can understand that. But to be replaced with what? If you don’t like our current foreign policy, what is Trump going to do? Saying that Putin is our friend doesn’t make it better.” —Lindsey Graham, US senator from South Carolina
“Obamacare is imploding. It’s in what actuaries call ‘a debt spiral.’ We propose a very comprehensive alternative, including the entitlement reforms necessary to avoid a debt crisis in the future.” —Paul Ryan, speaker of the US House of Representatives
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URBAN INNOVATION LAB
What’s
the
Big Idea? The Urban Innovation Lab invites social innovators to gather round for a rapid-fire “pitch session” of innovative solutions to urban issues. By Alison Decker
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Photos by Riccardo Savi
At the Aspen Institute, ideas are often given top billing. In September, the Institute’s Urban Innovation Lab partnered with its Youth & Engagement Programs to make big ideas in youth empowerment the main event, gathering a group of social innovators to pitch their groundbreaking solutions to the urban issues facing adolescents and young adults. The program also included a dialogue with four social innovators—from a high-school senior to acclaimed DC impact entrepreneurs. “This is a way we can step out of our daily work and be enlivened by new ideas,” said Jennifer Bradley, the founding director of the Center for Urban Innovation. “We have to think in new ways to make change on the issues that we care about.” In September, the focus was on empowering youth. Rajiv Vinnakota, the executive vice president of Youth & Engagement Programs at the Institute, asked, “What could we build if we implemented the Aspen philosophies of leadership and civil discourse in programs that engage young people?” Carolyn Zelikow, the manager of the Urban Innovation Lab, noted that cities are particularly adept at piloting the kind of policy experiments set forth by social innovators. “Despite the narrative that the United States
is a country “Racism is in decline,” she said, “cities something that throughout was designed— America are but it can be actively solving redesigned and tough challenges dismantled.” from within.” Ideas ranged from design as a weapon against institutional racism to mobilizing marginalized youth in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor for a “charm offensive” against discrimination. Dona Anderson, a senior at Capital City Public Charter School in Washington, DC, and a participant in the Aspen Challenge, offered a big idea that was deceptively simple: play. As part of the Aspen Challenge, in which
URBAN INNOVATION LAB “What if we encouraged civil discourse and leadership development with young people?”
students are asked to come up with solutions to real-world problems in their communities, Anderson’s team created pop-up playgrounds at bus stops. They found that these spaces helped young people to socialize and relieve stress—and that adults were quickly drawn into the fun. “Play isn’t just for kids,” Anderson said. “You can laugh. You should try it.” She has plans to scale up the Aspen Challenge project after her graduation and spread it to other sites around the District and maybe even the country. “The way to counter stress is to make more opportunities to have fun,” she added. “Things instantly become less bad the second that you think that they won’t be. And that is how you can encourage people to change the world.” 72
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Mark Hecker, the executive director of Reach Incorporated, an organization that hires teenagers to be elementary-school reading tutors, works with young people across the DC area. His big idea, which he has implemented in his own work, is to flip a prevailing tendency in schools. Currently, schools often expect good behavior from kids and then reward them for that behavior with additional responsibility. Hecker argues that responsibility should be given first— and then good behavior will follow afterwards. “I’ve been cursed out, and everything you can imagine,” Hecker said. “But you don’t push kids away. You bring them back. You say, ‘We trust you to do great things even when you’re acting like you don’t
“Play is not just for kids. You can laugh. You should try it.”
deserve it.’ Eventually, they will step up and earn that trust.” To Hecker, solutions implemented in youth education must incorporate social behavior and be relevant and developmentally appropriate. What’s more, he added, students must be properly supported—no matter what. Innovation at the micro level can also lead to changes at a grander scale. Caroline Hill, founder of the DC Equity Lab, designs interventions that create equity in schools, organizations, and communities, with the underlying mission of dismantling institutional racism. One of her organization’s studies looked at truancy and found that when students are truant, it greatly helps to have a more personal interaction to tell them that they missed class.
“You show up. You don’t push kids away. You bring them back. You say, ‘We trust you to do great things.’”
Automated calls, Hill said, had the opposite effect. The solution? The DC Equity Lab brought in DC slam poets to make the truancy calls more tailored to each student. “Racism is something that was intentionally designed, but it can be can be redesigned and dismantled,” Hill said. “And equity by design is one of the first steps. We have a moral imperative to help educators, policymakers, and analysts design the future that we lead.” For those working with youth, the first lesson is often simply to listen. As Celia Neustadt, executive director of Baltimore’s Inner Harbor Project, said, “One of my students told me that in order to fix your ‘youth problem,’ you have to actually include youth and let them lead the solution.”
“In order to fix your ‘youth problem’ you have to actually include youth.”
Neustadt helps teenagers organize around issues of exclusion and violence in public spaces. Responding to the high volume of arrests and incidents between teenagers and business owners in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, her project helped create “youth ambassador brigades”: high-school students, who confer with police and representatives of other local institutions to build understanding. The brigades have led to a dramatic reduction in arrests. This can be replicated in other public spaces around the country, Neustadt said, like Gallery Place in Washington, DC, and Millennium Park in Chicago. September’s Big Idea Night marked the beginning of a focus on
youth empowerment at the Urban Innovation Lab, which will include deep-dive roundtable sessions and an action paper. The Urban Innovation Lab has plans to host similar events focused on themes that are of high relevance to policy conversations in the DC community. “We have to begin by recognizing the creativity and public service here in the District,” Zelikow, of the Urban Innovation Lab, said. “We want to pollinate emerging ideas that willl accelerate equitable thriving both here and across the nation.”
Alison Decker is the managing editor of Ideas: The Magazine of the Aspen Institute.
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CITYLAB 2016
Center: Syracuse Mayor Stephanie Miner, and Weaver Right: Bloomberg
CITYLAB BRINGS URBAN-INNOVATION EXPERTS TO MIAMI.
“As a city mayor, you have the responsibility of the day-to-day operations for people in your city right now,” Washington, DC, Mayor Muriel Bowser said. “But you’re always thinking about how you will get ready for growth—through systems, infrastructure, people. We have to be prepared for progress.” Bowser joined a group of 40 mayors and more than 500 participants from around the globe for CityLab 2016, the Aspen Institute’s fourth annual two-day summit in partnership with The Atlantic and Bloomberg Philanthropies. With its perennial emphasis on sharing best practices, CityLab embraced themes that included city leadership amid security threats, investment in aging infrastructure,
evictions and the homelessness crisis, the role of refugees in urban revitalization, and the coming emergence of driverless cars. After previous convenings in New York, Los Angeles, and London, downtown Miami served as campus to CityLab this year. Participants ventured out into the community, including the Wynwood Arts District, where local business and creative communities have transformed a oncederelict warehouse district into a vibrant cultural destination, and Miami Beach, for a look at the city’s climate-change and flood-mitigation efforts, including pumps, elevated streets, and sand-dune preservation. Guests also visited transportation hub MiamiCentral for an exclusive overview
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C2 Photography
Bright Lights in the City
Against a backdrop of widespread civic cynicism in both the United States and abroad, participants in CityLab 2016 gathered in Miami, Florida, as the US campaign season continued its seemingly endless stagger toward Election Day. Fine timing for the Aspen Institute and its partners at The Atlantic and Bloomberg Philanthropies to host the fourth annual CityLab: Urban Solutions to Global Challenges, which celebrates and promotes the power of innovative urban leadership.
“THE FUTURE IS HERE, WITH AUTONOMOUSVEHICLE PILOTS ROLLING OUT IN CITIES AROUND THE WORLD.” — MICHAEL BLOOMBERG of both the Miami Worldcenter site—a 27-acre project featuring retail, residential, and commercial buildings in the heart of downtown—and Brightline, the first and only privately funded rail in the United Cap-States, connecting Miami and Orlando. At CityLabs past, such outings might tion only have necessitated a wide-brimmed hat and some strong sunscreen. But this year, participants were armed with another travel must: bug spray. As Miami battles the spread of the Zika virus, other cities in the United States and Latin America are taking note. Speaking with The Atlantic’s new editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, at the close of CityLab, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Tom Frieden emphasized that cities have to invest in public health as a preemptive measure for local health concerns and to stop the spread of Zika nationally. “A weak link anywhere is a risk to us everywhere,” Frieden said. The importance of cities’ capacity for resilience surfaced again and again in conversations, as CityLab speakers and guests grappled with protecting public health, the challenge of inequality, and living
with a changing climate. “We’re having to prioritize in a reactionary way in response to a public-health crisis,” Mayor Karen Weaver of Flint, Michigan, said. “I hope that people are learning from Flint and that they don’t do things the way we’ve had to do them.” Weaver has been battling for clean water for Flint citizens since taking office in November 2015. Perhaps most powerfully, Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer took the CityLab stage just months after the worst mass shooting in US history devastated his city. He shared the power of community in responding to tragedies. “Part of the reason we were able to bounce back,” Dyer said, “was the love that came from all over the country, and all over the world. We saw the London Bridge lit up, the Eiffel Tower lit up in rainbow colors. We just felt that love and support.” Libby Franklin is the associate director for public programs at the Aspen Institute. Azalea Millan is the project manager for public programs at the Aspen Institute.
THIS YEAR AT CITYLAB, Bloomberg Philanthropies announced a continued partnership with the Institute’s Center for Urban Innovation to gather pioneering thought leadership on the values that should govern autonomous vehicles in urban environments. “The future is here, with autonomous-vehicle pilots rolling out in cities around the world,” Michael Bloomberg, the philanthropist and 108th mayor of New York, said. “The question is whether it will be industry and national governments that define this future—or our cities.” The Bloomberg Aspen Initiative is a time-limited one-year initiative to accelerate preparedness in ten leading global cities for the era of autonomous vehicles. It will leverage the Institute’s history of convening leading thinkers and policymakers with Bloomberg Philanthropies’ experience working to improve city life in more than 400 cities around the globe. The initiative will tap technologists, urban planners, and experts on the ties between inequality and mobility. “The real innovation potential here is not just for new kinds of cars,” Walter Isaacson, president and CEO of the Institute, commented, “but new kinds of communities.” IDEAS
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Elevating Healthcare IN ASPEN When it comes to living healthy, Aspen Valley Hospital’s team of experts strive to deliver exceptional and compassionate medical care every day. Making sure our staff and physicians have world-class facilities, equipment and resources is a shared mission of our generous donors and Aspen Valley Hospital Foundation. Join us, as we continue to elevate healthcare in our community for generations to come.
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The Aspen Journal of Ideas offers thought-provoking analysis and issue-defining information from the programs and partners of the Institute. The digital magazine, updated weekly, is at aspen.us/journal.
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CAN LITERATURE SAVE US? AND WHY DO WE NEED SAVING? Book awards in the United States have the power to shape public conversations and thrust individuals and subject matters into the spotlight. But we have long needed to widen our literary lenses to become more diverse and inclusive. Carole DeSanti examines why the new Aspen Words Literary Prize is a gust of fresh air.
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APPLY YOURSELF The college-scholarship application process is far from simple—in fact, it is enormously complex and time consuming. But that hurts the students, who are often left wondering if they will even be able to attend college as they wait to hear about scholarships. Karen Gross tells us how to simplify the process.
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CAN LITERATURE SAVE US? (AND WHY DO WE NEED SAVING?)
Americans should think more about how we spotlight literary works: We have long needed to widen our lens of literary recognition to become more inclusive. BY CAROLE DESANTI 78
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he subject of book awards in the United States is a thorny one. Awards have the power to shape public conversation; to make or break careers; to thrust individuals, subject matters, and certain qualities into the spotlight—while marginalizing others. Yet the major players on the scene are so tenured—the National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize, the PEN Literary Awards, the National Book Critics’ Circle Award, the Man Booker Prize, and of course the Nobel Prize for Literature—that they can often seem preoccupied by a single aesthetic, even stagnant. And so the inauguration of the Aspen Words Literary Prize, a major new recognition of literary achievement focusing on fiction with social impact, will allow the Institute’s Aspen
Words program to think about how to shine the spotlight on One component of the project was to recharge the culture’s literary works with meaningful values. We have long needed starved imagination. Another was to find a way to talk about to widen our lens of literary recognition in the United States social conditions, life conditions, and enliven readers’ minds to and, especially, to diversify and become more far-reaching and the possibility of agency. This led us into a sticky area. Centuries inclusive. At a time when new ways of absorbing literature— of novelists from Jonathan Swift to Ruth Ozeki have done electronically, through audio, or via traditional print—are exactly that and found enthusiastic readerships. But within the proliferating, the need to foster creativity that has an impact is industry, to be explicit about such a mission was to risk ridicule, all the more pressing. stink of political correctness, and stand accused of slapping I’ve had a troubled relationship with literary awards. As a limitations on the creative process. young reader growing up in a Midwestern Rust Belt suburb, I But still. Legacies of such work had been passed down—these remember bypassing all of the books with gold seals emblazoned were the classics, evergreen and alive in the minds of readers. on the covers—the Newbery and Caldecott medalists, singled So, we proceeded by stealth and daring. For the peace of mind out as distinguished contributions to children’s literature—that of our managers, we couched projects in terms of commerce, were always prominently featured in our local library’s showcase. not society or (God forbid) social change. Readers voted with For some reason, I mistrusted those their feet—and increasingly, with golden stickers. Clearly, went my clicks. They wanted splendid works of reasoning, these were the books the imagination, escape, entertainment, A certain kind of book is adults wanted us to read. And not comfort, solace, reflection, and truth. just adults but East Coast foreigners. Readers wanted to find insights into not likely to show up on the I had an early sense this was a stuffy, present conditions, see the frameworks award lists. It’s a little elusive. for ideas change, and imagine a better teacup-rattling lot, possibly corseted, who couldn’t possibly understand more just world. A work of high quality but of andWe my reality. When I tell this story find ourselves now at a new now to my colleagues in publishing, cultural moment. We carry forward conscience. The writing of a they shake their heads and laugh. biases about subject matter, literary But as a kid I began sneaking up to person without connections or experimentation, hybrid forms, and the forbidden “adult stacks.” With a pedigree, with a fresh way of translations—though once they break reach not even as high as the shelves, through, many books with these seeing the world. I had a thrilling scent of the hunt and characteristics are embraced and knew my own prize would lie in the beloved. Witness the explosion of shadows of the lesser-known. interest in the Elena Ferrante novels. As an adult reader, I’ve granted There is a ferment of new voices and amnesty to awardees—especially as I now know many judges and of new ways to encounter and absorb them. the hard and good work they do. I have found many admirable What we need most are ways to discover the works we books with their help. But I know that a certain kind of book is individually and collectively need—that are as diverse as not likely to show up on the award lists, and especially the fiction the populations and communities we now are. The stigma lists. How to describe this book? It’s a little elusive. A work of has fallen away from integrating social issues into art, as high quality but of conscience. Maybe a bit transgressive; less Americans search for ways to solve problems that have wedded to the status quo. Perhaps it feels like the work of an accrued, unaddressed, for generations. And so the Aspen enlightened mind, not just a clever one. Or it is the writing of Words Literary Prize—coming from a tradition of finding and a person without connections or pedigree, with a fresh way of weaving ideas into society as well as recognizing talent and seeing the world. Plenty of forces range against the discovery of distinctive quality—is especially welcome. It’s time to reward such works, though. worthy work seriously and substantially—and sooner in the As an editor starting out, I found myself amid a small cohort careers of hard-pressed authors. As readers, we still need the of young editors and writers-to-be. Most of us hadn’t come from different drummer. The writing that squarely and beautifully the halls of privilege, and we thought it would be a good idea addresses inequality and injustice and the state of the world to diversify an industry that was rapidly shrinking itself into a as we find it. Writing that without dogma, artifice, or selfbattered stepchild of the glossier entertainment conglomerates. consciousness, is able to take a point of view on those values. We wanted to publish books that reflected and improved the The story that makes us feel more alive, more compassionate, worlds we had come from and we found ourselves in. Books that less impatient, wiser. It’s hard to know what it is until we see it. tackled race, class, sexuality, trauma, violence, healing, recovery, nutrition, spirituality. It was a grassroots movement of sorts, with the agenda only to widen the culture’s scope of what might be Carole DeSanti is vice president and executive editor at Penguin Random heard. There was plenty to be done. House and a member of the Aspen Words Creative Council. IDEAS
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APPLY YOURSELF
Finding and applying for scholarships is way too complicated. Here’s how to simplify the process—and get more students the help they need. BY KAREN GROSS 80
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hen institutions release their college acceptances, of which require auditions. Some even have entry fees. That the conversation quickly turns to helping students certainly ratchets up the time to research and alters the costfinance their higher education. Financialbenefit analysis of seeking multiple scholarships. aid letters from colleges are deciphered and Turning to the particular music scholarships offered by compared. There’s lots of effort and social-media attention to the National Federation of Music Clubs, one French horn getting state or private scholarships to bridge the gaps between scholarship seems to award $1,300 to one student, with an what a college can provide and what a student and his or her April 1 deadline. While there are age restrictions (recipient family needs for enrollment. The all-in costs of a residential must be between 19 and 26), there is no fee. My efforts to four-year college can be high and seemingly out of reach download the PDF application did not work, however. I found for many. another reference to the same scholarship that explained the But the quest for scholarships is far from simple actual process for obtaining it: a required submission and is enormously time-consuming. This is in of certain specified musical compositions, large part because there is no coordination played by the applicant on a tape or CD. among the scholarship donors in terms This reference to the scholarship also While it is of the application process, the actual listed the amount as $1,500. Nowhere understandable that application, and the notification could I find when there would be dates of approval or denial. Some notification of the award. Since there providers of scholarships applications are cost-free; others is only one such scholarship, it also require a small payment. Some are would be useful to know how many want autonomy, renewable; some are only for one students have applied each cycle. If independence is year. This creates a hodgepodge. there are ten scholarship applicants, As if the stress of college a talented player has a good shot at creating unnecessary admissions were not sufficient, the money. She might think twice students in need of scholarships rush hurdles for the students about applying against a field of 100 to meet different deadlines, complete applicants or even 1,000. they want to serve. different forms, write different essays, Despite a recent US News and World or prepare videos or audition tapes. Then Report suggestion that finding scholarships in they don’t hear results at any regularized time, music (this is where the French horn example which means that whether a student can even attend arose) is easy and just a matter of doing research, my college is thrown into question. This is particularly true if a own investigation shows just the opposite. To be sure, there are student needs to stack scholarships to reach the needed dollarscholarships available to French horn players, although many goal. And the problem recurs the next year for scholarships that are school-specific. Our hypothetical French horn player would are one-off awards. face multiple deadlines, possible video or CD submissions, and The power of scholarships can’t be underestimated. The all with no coordinated notification date. individuals, companies, foundations, and states that award What’s the solution? Create a database of scholarships of them should be lauded, truly and without question. But we all kinds for all fields of study with a single, relatively simple must find ways to help students of all socioeconomic classes application (augmented if needed by auditions, portfolios, get access to them. Most students must piece together small video, or audio recordings), with a regularized application due awards from multiple scholarships to finance their academic date and a standardized notification date. Ideally, that would dreams. be in April of a student’s senior year in high school if the Consider this example. Suppose a student is a musician scholarship is for the upcoming academic year. who plays a brass instrument (say the French horn) and is part It would be accessible for free, in multiple languages, for of a high-school marching band. There is a website that lists any student applying to college. The successful Common App scholarships for musicians attending college called UNIGO. or Universal College App could serve as models. Students Caution though: some websites charge to match students with could do searches for scholarships that meet their needs and applicable scholarships and some sites provide incomplete or determine whether they meet the requirements for each. even inaccurate information. While it is understandable that providers of scholarships Once on the UNIGO site, students can see a myriad want autonomy, independence is creating unnecessary of scholarships but face a range of restrictions. Many are hurdles for the students they want to serve. The universe of geographically limited; the scholarships are available to those organizations offering scholarships share the goal of helping from a particular state, region of a state, or even a town. Others promising students who have unique talents. Just imagine how are available only if one enrolls at a specific college. Some are much more we could do if every deserving student could find limited to a particular type of instrument or musical talent. and use these funds and no scholarships went unclaimed. Take the National Federation of Music Clubs Scholarship. Although UNIGO initially displayed a scholarship of $2,500 and an application date of March 1, 2016, the actual Federation Karen Gross is a former college president, consultant, and senior website contains a much larger range of scholarships, some counsel at Widmeyer Communications. IDEAS
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FACES:
Tisch Series: Conversations with Great Leaders Damian W oetzel, Reb and Tyler ecca Morse
Damian Woetzel and
Agnes Gund
Joel Miller and Rick Luftglass
Buzz and Al
ison Zaino,
and Joel Mill
er
David Zalaznick ather Watts
Jody Arnhold and He
Thelma Golden and Michelle
Ellen Sabin
Smith
Laurie Tisch
Weinberg
Tyler Morse, Damia
n Woetzel, Adam We
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inberg
Erin Baiano
en and Adam
Thelma Gold
FACES: McNulty Prize Hayne Hipp
Ann Lam
ont
lty
d Anne McNu
an Amy Crockett
Brynne McNulty
Patricia Pinzon and KC Hardin
s
Amber Jani
Jared Siskin
Keith Berwick
and William E.
Mayer
ett Amy Crock
Noreen Mercedes Bass
McNulty
Tully an d
IDEAS
Charlie
McNulty
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FACES: Annual Awards Diane Morris
and Guilford
Robinson
Patrick Awuah and Bill Bynum
Francis H
offman a
Jordan K assalow
nd Robe
rt K Stee
l
and Ann
e McNult
y
John Paulson and Mercedes Bass
eleine Albright
Michael Bloomberg and Mad
lter Isaacson
Tom Brokaw and Wa
Jim Crown
Stewart and Lynda Res nick
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Mercedes Bass Jane Pauley and Tom Brokaw
Laurie Tisch, Carolyn Tisc Blod h gettMcNulty Amy Crockett and Anne and William Blodgett
Jared Siskin
Melinda Gates and Walter Isaacson
WE’RE SOLD
on a strong performance.
Inspiring. Informed. Creative. Sandie and Archer Bishop have a keen eye for Aspen real estate. What they needed was an agent with their ear to the ground. In Susan Plummer they found an agent who shared their eye for quality and value, and with the skill to orchestrate every last note.
Susan Plummer | 970.948.6786
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INTERNATIONAL PARTNERS
BUCHAREST FORUM AND ASPEN INITIATIVE FOR EUROPE
organized by Aspen Institute Romania and the US German Marshall Fund’s Bucharest office. Themed “A Certain Idea of Europe,” the Bucharest meeting examined overlapping crises in the European Union; an institutional, political, and cultural analysis of the refugee crisis; the Brexit vote; and lingering issues of the Economic and Monetary Union. Keynote addresses from high-level officials, including Ludovic Orban, former EU commissioner and EU affairs advisor to the president of Romania, addressed practical questions on negotiation for the future of the European Union. A panel also examined strategic issues on East-West cooperation, such as the prospects for the West’s relations with Russia and Turkey.
Mircea Geoana, Frederica Mogherini
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Photo courtesy of Aspen Institute Romania
In October, Aspen Romania hosted representatives from all seven Aspen European partners as part of a meeting for the Aspen Initiative for Europe (AIfE). The partners had a private meeting with Federica Mogherini, EU high representative for foreign and security policy and vice president of the European Commission, who committed to supporting the AIfE, thanked representatives for their contribution to the European Global Strategy for external relations and security, and extended an invitation for further contributions from the Aspen network and AIfE. The AIfE meeting preceded the fifth annual Bucharest Forum, Romania’s largest international convening jointly
NEW LEADERSHIP IN PRAGUE AND GERMANY
In June, Aspen Germany welcomed a new chairman of its
Also in June, the board of directors of Aspen Institute Prague
board of trustees, Eckart von Klaeden, who has been a
elected Ivan Hodacˇ as its new president and expressed
member of the Board since 2010. Von Klaeden is the vice
thanks to outgoing president Michael Žantovský for his work
president for external affairs at Daimler AG, where he is
in the office. Hoda is the founder and former vice president
responsible for public relations and Daimler’s political
of the Aspen Institute Prague board of directors. He was the
dialogue worldwide. In his new role at Aspen Germany, von
secretary-general of the European Automobile Manufacturers’
Klaeden will focus on Aspen Germany’s commitment to
Association from 2001 until October 2013, and he now
serve as a nonpartisan and independent platform, bringing
works as special advisor to that group’s board of directors.
together diverse groups and initiating and facilitating
Previously, Hoda was senior vice president and head of the
trans-Atlantic dialogue.
Time Warner corporate office for Europe.
Photos courtesy of Klaeden, Hodac
Klaeden
Hodacˇ
ASPEN INSTITUTE KYIV Aspen Institute Kyiv completed its first regional International Leadership Seminar in Odessa in October. Participants from Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, the Russian Federation, and Ukraine came together to discuss pillars of civility in the context of regional contradictions and development trends. The group explored ideas of both classic and modern authors, including Aristotle, Plato, Sophocles, Al-Farabi, Thomas Hobbs, and Leo Tolstoy in order to frame discussions of values and principles that are important for modern leaders. The 16 participants also identified and discussed important issues for the region in the post-Soviet era, like regional security, legal and illegal migration, economic and cultural cooperation, education reform, and others. IDEAS
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FACTS/PROGRAMS
Dan Bayer
SEMINARS
Seminars help participants explore the tensions among the values that form our conception of a Good Society, with the aim of deepening knowledge, broadening perspectives, and enhancing the capacity to solve the problems leaders face. Our unique, humanities-based approach to leadership development uses a variety of classic and contemporary philosophical and literary texts as the basis for intensive, interactive roundtable discussions led by skilled moderators in small groups of 15–20 participants. Facebook.com/AspenLeadership 88
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Twitter: @AspenDialogue
JUSTICE & SOCIETY SEMINAR
THE ASPEN EXECUTIVE SEMINAR ON LEADERSHIP, VALUES, AND THE GOOD SOCIETY
Co-founded by the late Supreme Court Justice Harry
The Aspen Executive Seminar challenges leaders in every
A. Blackmun, this seminar brings together people from
field to clarify the values by which they lead and to think
diverse backgrounds to discuss what we mean by justice
more critically and deeply about their impact on the world
and how a just society ought to structure its legal, judicial,
in a moderated, text-based Socratic dialogue.
and political institutions. Roundtable discussions are led
aspeninstitute.org/aspenseminar
by two distinguished and experienced moderators: a
MARCH 11–17, 2017 | ASPEN, CO
federal or state high court judge and a professor of law or politcal theory. Contact Michael.Green@aspeninstitute.org:
APRIL 8–14, 2017 | ASPEN, CO
aspeninstitute.org/jss
APRIL 22– 28, 2017 | WYE RIVER
JULY 6–12, 2017 | ASPEN, CO
MAY 6–12, 2017 | WYE RIVER
ASPEN ROMANIA LEADERSHIP SEMINAR
JUNE 3–9, 2017 | ASPEN, CO
In collaboration with Aspen Institute Romania, this seminar
AUGUST 12–18, 2017 | ASPEN, CO
explores the specific leadership challenges facing business, government, and civil society in a post-communist
SEPTEMBER 9–15, 2017 | ASPEN, CO
environment. aspeninstitute.org/romaniaseminar
OCTOBER 14–20, 2017 | WYE RIVER
JUNE 22-25, 2017 | FUNDATA, BRASOV, ROMANIA
LEADERSHIP AND CHARACTER
In a longstanding collaboration with the Association of
Leadership and Character takes up where the Aspen
American Colleges and Universities, these seminars engage
Executive Seminar leaves off, looking at the internal context
faculty, senior academic administrators, and college
of making leadership decisions and exploring the competing
presidents in an exchange of ideas about liberal arts
tensions that form our internal moral compass.
education, citizenship, and the global polity.
WYE ACADEMIC PROGRAMS
aspeninstitute.org/characterseminar
NATURE, SOCIETY, AND SUSTAINABILITY Nature, Society, and Sustainability provides both updated content and a values framework as we balance the tensions
aspeninstitute.org/wyeseminars
WYE DEANS' SEMINAR TBD | WYE RIVER, MD
between a vibrant human social and economic ecology and environmental sustainability. aspeninstitute.org/natureseminar
ASPEN ESPAÑA SEMINAR Transatlantic Values at a Crossroads: Contemporary Leadership Challenges In collaboration with Aspen Institute España, this seminar probes the European context of modern leadership in the midst of the uncertainties in democratic capitalism, nationalism, and culture. aspeninstitute.org/espanaseminar ASPEN ITALIA SEMINAR Values and Society & Leadership, Globalization, and the Quest for Common Values In collaboration with Aspen Italia, these concurrent seminars explore the cultural challenges of leadership in a European context, deepening partcipants' understandings of the values by which they lead even as those values are tested
WYE FACULTY SEMINAR JULY 16–21, 2017 | WYE RIVER, MD
CUSTOM SEMINARS Custom Seminars enable organizations and companies to develop one-day or multiday seminars relevant to their day-to-day operations. aspeninstitute.org/customseminar
“As a CEO, taking time to sharpen the saw is critical. The Aspen Seminar is the best whetstone out there.” —Reed Hastings, founder and CEO, Netflix
by the demands of globalization. MARCH 2–5, 2017 | CASTELVECCHIO PASCOLI, LUCCA, ITALY
FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT THE INDIVIDUAL PROGRAMS. IDEAS
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THE SOCRATES PROGRAM The Socrates Program provides a forum for emerging leaders (ages approximately 28–45) from a wide range of professions to explore contemporary issues through expert-moderated roundtable dialogue. aspeninstitute.org/socrates
NOVEMBER 17–20, 2016 SOCRATES MEXICO | PUEBLA, MEXICO
JUSTICE & SOCIETY SEMINAR July 6-12, 2017 | Aspen, CO
The Justice & Society Seminar, co-founded by the late Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun and held each year in Aspen, brings together a diverse group of lifelong learners to discuss what we mean by justice and how a just society should structure its legal, judicial, and political institutions
The Future of Work in a Digital Economy Moderator: Sonal Shah, professor of practice and founding executive director of the Beeck Center for Social Impact and Innovation at Georgetown University
DECEMBER 8–11, 2016 SOCRATES UKRAINE | KYIV, UKRAINE The Future of Privacy and Transparency: Surveillance in a Digital Age Moderator: Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution Center
FEBRUARY 17–20, 2017
The 2017 seminar will be moderated by Dean Robert Post of Yale Law School, Professor Reva Siegel of Yale Law School, and Judge Brett Kavanaugh of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit
WINTER SEMINARS | ASPEN, CO
Auditing privileges are available to members of the Justice Circle
The Motivation Divide in a Global Economy
Global Security and America's Role in the New World Order Moderators: Dina Temple-Raston, NPR's counterterrorism correspondent, and Harvey Rishikof, senior counsel in Crowell & Moring’s Privacy & Cybersecurity and Government Contracts Groups and former dean of faculty at the National War College
Moderator: Amanda Ripley, journalist and best-selling author of The Smartest Kids in the World—and How They Got That Way The Influence of the Corporation Moderator: Judy Samuelson, founder and executive director of the Aspen Institute's Business and Society Program
MAY 25–28, 2017 SOCRATES SPAIN | RONDA, SPAIN Moderators and topics TBC
JULY 7–10, 2017 For more information, please visit
www.aspeninstitute.org/jss
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SUMMER SEMINARS | ASPEN, CO Moderators and Topics TBC
JOIN THE
SOCIETY OF FELLOWS
UPCOMING EVENTS
The Society of Fellows is an engaged community of supporters who actively participate in the Institute’s programs, act as advocates and ambassadors, and help sustain the Institute’s mission. For more information on joining the Society of Fellows, please contact Peter Waanders, director of the Society of Fellows, by email at peter.waanders@aspeninstitute.org.
OCTOBER 18 SOF VANGUARD CHAPTER RECEPTION IN PARTNERSHIP WITH THE FINANCIAL SECURITY PROGRAM: On Economic Insecurity, American Values, and the Politics of Resentment in the 2016 Election with Mickey Edwards, Stan Greenberg, Heather McGee, Jacob Hacker, and J.D. Vance DOERR-HOSIER BUILDING | ASPEN, CO
NOVEMBER 7 SOF RECEPTION: How Nations Thrive and Survive in a World in Decline with Jonathan Tepperman PRIVATE HOME | ASPEN, CO
NOVEMBER 16
SERIOUS MEETINGS THE NATURAL WAY An ideal retreat setting with more than 1,000 acres on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.
Privacy abounds on the grounds of two estates with state-of-the-art conference facilities, 51 distinctive accommodations, farm-totable cuisine, striking water views and notable amenities.
SOF RECEPTION: From Silk to Silicon: The Story of Globalization with Jeffrey Garten PRIVATE HOME | SAN FRANCISCO, CA
DECEMBER 8 SOF VANGUARD CHAPTER HOLIDAY PARTY: The Supreme Court Today with Neal Katyal PRIVATE HOME | ASPEN, CO
DECEMBER 29 ASPEN INSTITUTE HOLIDAY RECEPTION The Race Card Project: Conversations that Build Understanding, Respect, and Hope for the Future with Michele Norris DOERR-HOSIER BUILDING | ASPEN, CO
FOR MORE INFORMATION VISIT
ASPENWYERIVER.COM OR CALL
410.820.0905
*Please visit aspeninstitute.org/sof for a complete list of Society of Fellows events.
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FACTS/PROGRAMS
LEADERSHIP
Dan Bayer
THE INSTITUTE CULTIVATES ENTREPRENEURIAL LEADERS AND ENCOURAGES THEM TO TACKLE THE GREAT CHALLENGES OF OUR TIMES THROUGH SOCIAL VENTURES. SPANNING VARIOUS GEOGRAPHIC AND ISSUE AREAS, WE HOST 14 DIFFERENT FELLOWSHIPS.
Fellows at the Resnick Aspen Action Forum
THE ASPEN GLOBAL LEADERSHIP NETWORK Each Aspen Global Leadership Network program, inspired by the Henry Crown Fellowship Program, is developing a new generation of civically engaged men and women by encouraging them to move “from success to significance” and to apply their entrepreneurial talents to addressing the foremost challenges of their organizations, communities, and countries. Today, there are more than 2,300 Fellows in 50 countries.
Henry Crown Fellowship Program
Environment Leaders Fellowship
agln.aspeninstitute.org/fellowships/ henrycrown
agln.aspeninstitute.org/fellowships/ environment
Africa Leadership Initiative (ALI)
Finance Leaders Fellowship
Pahara-Aspen Education Fellowship
agln.aspeninstitute.org/fellowships/ financeleaders
agln.aspeninstitute.org/fellowships/pahara
*including programs in East Africa, West Africa, and the country of South Africa agln.aspeninstitute.org/fellowships/ africaleadership
Aspen Institute-Rodel Fellowships in Public Leadership aspeninstitute.org/Rodel
Central America Leadership Initiative (CALI) agln.aspeninstitute.org/fellowships/CALI
China Fellowship Program agln.aspeninstitute.org/fellowships/ chinafellowship
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Health Innovators Fellowship http://agln.aspeninstitute.org/fellowships/ healthinnovators
Kamalnayan Bajaj Fellowship *formerly the India Leadership Initiative agln.aspeninstitute.org/fellowships/kbf
Liberty Fellowship Program agln.aspeninstitute.org/fellowships/liberty
Middle East Leadership Initiative (MELI) agln.aspeninstitute.org/fellowships/meli
CENTER FOR URBAN
INNOVATION
The center bridges the gap between innovators and underserved neighborhoods, so that innovators focus more attention on community challenges and so neighborhood residents can bring their own groundbreaking ideas to life. aspeninstitute.org/policy-work/ center-urban-innovation
FACTS/PROGRAMS
Dan Bayer
POLICY
Policy programs and initiatives serve as nonpartisan forums for analysis, consensus-building, and problem-solving on a wide variety of issues.
Aspen Security Forum
ASCEND AT THE ASPEN INSTITUTE ascend.aspeninstitute.org
CONGRESSIONAL PROGRAM aspeninstitute.org/congressional
ASPEN FORUM FOR COMMUNITY SOLUTIONS aspeninstitute.org/solutions
ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITIES PROGRAM aspeninstitute.org/eop
ASPEN GLOBAL HEALTH AND DEVELOPMENT aspeninstitute.org/ghd ASPEN INSTITUTE LATINOS AND SOCIETY PROGRAM aspeninstitute.org/latinos-society ASPEN NETWORK OF DEVELOPMENT ENTREPRENEURS aspeninstitute.org/ande ASPEN PLANNING AND EVALUATION PROGRAM aspeninstitute.org/apep ASPEN STRATEGY GROUP aspeninstitute.org/asg BUSINESS AND SOCIETY PROGRAM aspeninstitute.org/bsp CENTER FOR NATIVE AMERICAN YOUTH aspeninstitute.org/cnay
EDUCATION AND SOCIETY PROGRAM aspeninstitute.org/education ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENT PROGRAM aspeninstitute.org/ee GLOBAL ALLIANCES PROGRAM aspeninstitute.org/global-alliances FINANCIAL SECURITY PROGRAM aspeninstitute.org/fsp HEALTH, MEDICINE, AND SOCIETY PROGRAM aspeninstitute.org/health HOMELAND SECURITY PROGRAM aspeninstitute.org/security JUSTICE AND SOCIETY PROGRAM aspeninstitute.org/justice PROGRAM ON PHILANTHROPY AND SOCIAL INNOVATION aspeninstitute.org/psi
CITIZENSHIP AND AMERICAN IDENTITY PROGRAM aspeninstitute.org/citizenship
PROGRAM ON THE WORLD ECONOMY aspeninstitute.org/pwe
COLLEGE EXCELLENCE PROGRAM aspeninstitute.org/college-excellence
ROUNDTABLE ON COMMUNITY CHANGE aspeninstitute.org/rcc
COMMUNICATIONS AND SOCIETY PROGRAM aspeninstitute.org/c&s
SERVICE YEAR ALLIANCE www.aspeninstitute.org/franklin-project
COMMUNITY STRATEGIES GROUP aspeninstitute.org/csg
SPORTS AND SOCIETY aspeninstitute.org/sports-society THE STEVENS INITIATIVE stevensinitiative.org IDEAS
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POLICY PROGRAM
FELLOWSHIPS
Born from the policy programs at the Aspen
I have been a part of the Aspen community and affiliated with the Aspen Institute for over 30 years. Having been trusted to develop and sell some of the most prestigious properties in our area, it would be my pleasure to help you with your real estate needs.
Institute, Policy Leadership Programs seek to empower exceptional individuals to lead with innovation in their chosen fields. These individuals then become more effective change
John Sarpa
agents who can influence
970.379.2595
John@JohnSarpa.com
History
|
Respect
the institutions and fields in |
Leadership
|
Results
which they work and lead to create better outcomes for society. NEW VOICES FELLOWSHIP Founded by the Institute’s Global Health and Development Program, the New Voices Fellowship cultivates compelling experts to speak on development issues. aspennewvoices.org
THE ASCEND FELLOWSHIP Founded by the Institute’s Ascend Program, the Ascend Fellowship targets diverse pioneers paving new pathways that break the cycle of intergenerational poverty. aspeninstitute.org/ascend
FIRST MOVERS FELLOWSHIP Founded by the Institute’s Business and Society Program, the First Movers Fellowship helps corporate social intrapreneurs deliver financial value to their company and positive
Floral Arts
social and environmental outcomes for the
for Weddings, Events & Everyday
world.
970.920.6838 ~ www.sashae.com
aspeninstitute.org/firstmovers
300 Puppy Smith St. ~ Aspen, CO IDEAS WINTER 2016/2017 94 Sashae_AspenIdea_sum14.indd 1
4/27/14 7:28 PM
FACTS/PROGRAMS
C2 Photography
PUBLIC
Public conferences and events provide a commons for people to share ideas.
Aspen Ideas Festival
ASPEN IDEAS FESTIVAL This weeklong, large-scale public event—co-hosted by The Atlantic—brings some of the world’s brightest minds and leaders to Aspen every summer for enlightened dialogue on the planet’s most pressing issues.
ASPEN SECURITY FORUM On the Institute’s campus in Aspen, the Aspen Security Forum convenes leaders in government, industry, media, think tanks, and academia to explore key national homeland security and counterterrorism issues.
aspenideas.org
aspensecurityforum.org
WASHINGTON IDEAS FORUM Presented in partnership with The Atlantic, this Washington, DC–based event features leading figures in public policy discussing the most important issues of the day.
ONGOING PROGRAMS IN NEW YORK The Institute hosts a variety of programs in New York City, from book talks and benefits to roundtable discussions, forums, and the Aspen Leadership Series: Conversations with Great Leaders in Memory of Preston Robert Tisch. aspeninstitute.org/events/newyorkevents
ASPEN WORDS Throughout the year, Aspen Words encourages writers in their craft and readers in their appreciation of literature by hosting festivals, readings, and other literary exchanges. aspenwords.org
ASPEN COMMUNITY PROGRAMS The Institute offers residents of Aspen and the surrounding Roaring Fork Valley communities a variety of programs throughout the year, including speaker series, community seminars, and film screenings.
THE ASPEN INSTITUTE ARTS PROGRAM The Arts Program was established to support and invigorate the arts in America and to return the arts to the Institute’s “Great Conversation.” It brings together artists, advocates, educators, managers, foundations, and government officials to exchange ideas and develop policies that strengthen the reciprocal relationship between the arts and society.
aspeninstitute.org/community
aspeninstitute.org/arts
aspeninstitute.org/events
ONGOING PROGRAMS IN WASHINGTON, DC From September through June, the Institute’s DC headquarters hosts the Alma and Joseph Gildenhorn Book Series, featuring discussions with major recent authors. Concurrently, the Washington Ideas Roundtable Series focuses on world affairs, arts, and culture.
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CALENDAR
For more information about any of these events, please call Natasha Little at 800.410.3463
JULY 8, 2017 SOCRATES ANNUAL BENEFIT DINNER Location: The Doerr-Hosier Center, Aspen Meadows Website: aspeninstitute.org/socratesdinner
AUGUST 5, 2017 23RD ANNUAL SUMMER CELEBRATION Location: The Doerr-Hosier Center, Aspen Meadows Website: aspeninstitute.org/summercelebration
2017 ANNUAL AWARDS DINNER Location: The Plaza Hotel, New York City Website: aspeninstitute.org/annualdinner
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C2 Photography
NOVEMBER 9, 2017
Stunning Luxury on Exclusive Red Mountain
Susan Guggenheim Lodge 970.379.1467 Susan.Lodge @ sir.com
AspenLodgeProperties.com Price Upon Request. For additional information visit: AspenRedMountainContemporary.com
“In the depth of winter, I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.”
ATTORNEYS AT LAW (l-r) Ann Hutchison, Michele Bass, Matt Ferguson, Kristi Ferraro, Michelle Schindler 119 S. Spring St, Ste 201 Aspen, Colorado 81611 MATTHEWFERGUSONLAW.COM 970.925.6288
LITIGATION & TRANSACTIONS Civil | Business | Real Estate
CONNECT WITH US ASPEN ACROSS AMERICA Executive Vice President, Institutional Advancement and Corporate Secretary Eric L. Motley 202.736.2900 eric.motley@aspeninstitute.org SOCRATES PROGRAM INTERNATIONAL PARTNERS Vice President, Director Melissa Ingber 202.736.1077 melissa.ingber@aspeninstitute.org
THE SOCIETY OF FELLOWS Director Peter Waanders 970.544.7912 peter.waanders@aspeninstitute.org aspeninstitute.org/sof
TO CONTACT INSTITUTE LEADERS SEMINARS Director Todd Breyfogle 202.341.7803 todd.breyfogle@aspeninstitute.org aspeninstitute.org/seminars
HENRY CROWN FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM Managing Director, Henry Crown Fellowship Program Tonya Hinch 202.736.3523 tonya.hinch@aspeninstitute.org aspeninstitute.org/crown
ASPEN COMMUNITY PROGRAMS Vice President, Aspen Director, Aspen Community Programs Cristal Logan 970.544.7929 cristal.logan@aspeninstitute.org aspeninstitute.org/community
PUBLIC PROGRAMS Vice President Aspen Ideas Festival, Director Kitty Boone 970.544.7926 kitty.boone@aspeninstitute.org
DONATIONS, SPECIAL EVENTS, AND BENEFITS Director of Development Events and Donor Relations Leah Bitounis 202.736.2289 leah.bitounis@aspeninstitute.org
aspenideas.org
ASPEN GLOBAL LEADERSHIP NETWORK
POLICY PROGRAMS Director of Administration, Policy and Public Programs Donna Horney 202.736.5835 donna.h@aspeninstitute.org
Dep. Director, Operations & Partnerships
Willow Darsie 202.736.3545 willow.darsie@aspeninstitute.org aspeninstitute.org/leadership
Vice President, Director Jamie Miller 202.736.1075 jamie.miller@aspeninstitute.org
aspeninstitute.org/policy-work
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HERITAGE SOCIETY To learn more about planned giving opportunities, please call Kris Robinson 202.736.3852 aspeninstitute.org/heritagesociety
MEDIA INQUIRIES Managing Director, Communications and Public Affairs Pherabe Kolb 202.736.2906 pherabe.kolb@aspeninstitute.org
OFFICES HEADQUARTERS Suite 700, One Dupont Circle, NW Washington, DC 20036-1133 202.736.5800 ASPEN CAMPUS 1000 North Third Street Aspen, CO 81611 970.925.7010 WYE RIVER CAMPUS 2010 Carmichael Road, P.O. Box 222 Queenstown, MD 21658 410.827.7168 NEW YORK OFFICES 477 Madison Avenue, Suite 730 New York, NY 10022 212.895.8000
C2 Photography
aspeninstitute.org/socrates aspeninstitute.org/international
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FOLLOW US
Join our friends at Facebook.com/AspenInstitute. To learn how to reach individual policy programs on Facebook, go to aspeninstitute.org/socialmedia.
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Find Ideas Online Lost your most recent issue of Ideas: The Magazine of the Aspen Institute? You can find articles and full issues of previous editions on the Aspen Institute's new, mobile-friendly website. Go to aspeninstitute.org/magazine to see your favorite articles in a digital format. E-NEWSLETTER Sign up for the Aspen Institute biweekly e-newsletter at aspeninstitute.org/newsletter.
MULTIMEDIA CHANNEL Find videos of many of the Institute’s panels and discussions, many of which are invitation-only at aspeninstitute.org/video.
PUBLICATIONS To find Institute publications, some of which are available for purchase or downloadable for free, go to aspeninstitute.org/publications.
IDEAS: THE MAGAZINE OF THE ASPEN INSTITUTE To find and share this issue online, go to aspeninstitute.org/magazine. THE ASPEN IDEA BLOG Aspen Institute directors, experts, and guest bloggers offer insight into the work of the organization at
Join our LinkedIn Group to read more from the Institute at Linkedin.com/company/the-aspen-institute.
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aspeninstitute.org/blog.
THE ASPEN JOURNAL OF IDEAS The Institute’s digital collection of thought-provoking analyses and opinions on critical issues is at aspeninstitute.org/journal.
Find some of the Institute’s longer publications, including the magazine, at Scribd.com/aspeninstitute.
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Erin Baiano
PARTING SHOT
A Change in Focus As the weather turns colder, the Aspen Institute does not hide indoors. Rather, it continues to look outward and assess the impact our programs have across the country and around the world, creating a place—whether it be in DC conference rooms, a hospital in Malawi, or a classroom on the South Side of Chicago—where individuals can engage and work toward a Good Society. Our leaders take issues into their own hands—and often, as when Institute friends and regular visitors Thelma Golden and Agnes Gund met this fall, their own cell-phone cameras—to capture the moments that bring us together. After a turbulent year, the Aspen Institute might be just what society needs most: a place where people from all sides can come together around the table to hit pause, reflect, and commit to leading with values and integrity. Ideas: The Magazine of the Aspen Institute is published three times each year by the Aspen Institute and distributed to Institute constituents, friends, and supporters. To receive a copy, call (202) 736-5800. Postmaster: Please send address changes to The Aspen Institute Communications Department, Ste. 700, One Dupont Circle NW, Washington, DC 20036. The opinions and statements expressed by the authors and contributors to this publication do not necessarily reflect opinions or positions of the Aspen Institute, which is a nonpartisan forum. All rights reserved. No material in this publication may be published or copied without the express written consent of the Aspen Institute. ©The Aspen Institute All Rights Reserved
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THE
FALL &WINTER
COLLECTION
VA I L ASPEN PA R K C I T Y B E AV E R C R E E K SNOWMASS