A Look Back at 2024

Before we dive into 2025, let’s take a look at some of the videos, articles, photos, and posts that interested you the most in 2024. These are big ideas that sparked, inspired, and compelled you to watch, listen, and share.

This is your Aspen Institute Wrapped.

YouTube

Aspen Ideas Festival videos took over your screens this year. Whether it was Edging Toward the Brink, a talk about U.S.-China relations, or David Brooks looking at the root causes of populism and authoritarianism, 2024 was a banner year for thought-provoking conversations.

Watch all the videos here.

The biggest gift in Aspen Institute’s history brought out many of likes, claps, and clicks. Thank you for celebrating the historic announcement of the new Aspen Institute Center for Rising Generations.

In October, we lost a friend, mentor, and leader. Lola Adedokun was the Executive Director of the Aspen Global Innovators Group and her passing deeply affected many of you as well. Thank you for sharing your love and her words.

Instagram

Dan Buettner helped us kick off our new Instagram show Leading Voices. You appreciated Dan’s wise words on the importance of finding a mentor and why leaders should check their egos.

Thousands relived an inspiring week at Aspen Ideas: Climate in Miami where scientists, entrepreneurs, artists, innovators, and policymakers joined together in service of building a better climate future.

Articles

In early 2024, Aspen Digital grabbed readers' attention by providing a plan for our first “AI elections.”

When Aspen Institute’s Food & Society Program and the Economic Opportunities Program partnered to host a panel discussion on the state of farm work in the US and what is being done to raise job quality in the industry, readers reacted with deep interest, making this one of the most read blog posts of the year.

Finally, the year ended on a celebratory note as readers flocked to a post announcing the 2024 Class of Finance Leaders Fellows.

Upcoming Events

Leadership

Courageous Leadership For and With Families

January 16, 2025

Virtual

How can we courageously lead with and for families in order to affect policy, systems, and structural changes in today’s new political context? Aspen Institute Vice President Anne Mosle will sit down with partners from Future Caucus to discuss leadership in this changing environment, drawing on recent data on leadership and public support for two-generation approaches to family well-being.

Learn More & Register

Economic Opportunity

How Financial Activism Can Help Build a Gender-Equitable Economy

January 23, 2025

Virtual

By 2030, women are expected to control $34 trillion of U.S. financial assets, a three-fold increase in just a decade. Led by Aspen Institute Financial Security Program Senior Fellow Heather McCulloch, this dialogue features an in-depth discussion with authors and impact investors who are helping women and people of color become “financial activists” in order to use the power of their money to support the change they want to see in the world.

Learn More & Register

Big Ideas

Aspen Ideas Festival and Aspen Ideas: Health

June 22 - July 1, 2025

Aspen, CO

Passes are on sale for Aspen Ideas Festival and Aspen Ideas: Health 2025! Engage with inspiring leaders, brilliant thinkers and bold change-makers on our awe-inspiring Rocky Mountain campus. From dawn to dark, we’ll stretch our minds, feed our imaginations and explore the ideas that are shaping our collective future.

Get Your Pass

In Focus: Igniting Leadership

Simon Godwin, Artistic Director of the Shakespeare Theatre Company and 2023-'24 Harman/Eisner Artist in Residence for the Aspen Institute Arts Program, shares lessons learned he's from a career in arts leadership that apply to leaders of all industries and organizations.

Leadership is at the heart of our collective future. We’re exploring the many dimensions of effective leaders and leadership through our In Focus Series on “Igniting Leadership."

Around the Institute

Rising Generations

Teach Them Well and Let Them Lead the Way

Hear from President and CEO of the Aspen Institute Dan Porterfield and Kaya Henderson, Executive Vice President and Executive Director of the Center for Rising Generations at the Aspen Institute, as they discuss the untapped potential of young people to lead and shape the future in this episode of Aspen Ignites.

Leadership

Remembering President Jimmy Carter

We mourn the passing of President Jimmy Carter with appreciation for his lifetime of service and leadership.

President Carter, who received the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, was a friend of the Aspen Institute, participating in several events and joining a 2008 expedition to the Arctic as part of the Aspen Institute Commission on Arctic Climate Change.

Economic Opportunity

Public Support for a 2Gen Approach

When power shifts, how can we ensure families aren’t forgotten in the shuffle? The answer, according to new election exit polling from Ascend at the Aspen Institute, is to leverage two-generation (2Gen) approaches to well-being. Explore their findings in a new report.

In the News

Societal Trust

In an op-ed for the Rio Grande Guardian, Ascend at the Aspen Institute's Anne Mosle shows how the federal government should look to states for inspiration on policy that delivers for families.

Economic Opportunity

CNN featured the Financial Security Program's report From Rent to Riches: A Profile of the Wealth and Financial Well-Being of Renter Households, to tell the story of the housing market as a "growing divide between 'haves' and 'have-nots.'"

Economic Opportunity

Aspen Community Strategies Group Co-Executive Director Chris Estes recently appeared on the Rural Matters podcast to discuss the importance of Rural Development Hubs, federal rural investment opportunities, and the need to rethink funding strategies.

Leadership

CBS remembered the late President Jimmy Carter through photographs, featuring him on stage at the Aspen Institute.

Economic Opportunity

The Wall Street Journal featured Aspen Economic Strategy Group Policy Director Luke Pardue in an article exploring economic challenges for 30-somethings.

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