Aspen Global Leadership Network

The Aspen Global Leadership Network is the Aspen Institute's umbrella for a family of values-based leadership fellowships. It reports more than 4,000 Fellows across 62 countries and 16 or more constituent fellowships, of which the Henry Crown Fellowship, established in 1997, is the flagship. Each fellowship follows the same design: a small class, a two-year sequence of moderated, text-based seminars, and a required leadership venture that each Fellow designs and carries out. The Henry Crown Fellowship selects a class of 20 to 22 leaders a year from a pool aged roughly 30 to 46, and runs four seminars totalling about 24 to 25 days across two years, at the Institute's Aspen campus, its Lone Rock campus in Bailey, Colorado, and international locations. After the two years, Fellows join a lifetime community with continuing gatherings, notably the Resnick Aspen Action Forum, and access to grant programmes including the McNulty Prize and the McNulty Prize Catalyst Fund.

How it works

Fellows enter through one of the constituent fellowships, most of which run two-year cohorts. The core method is moderated seminar dialogue around assigned texts rather than lectures or case studies, paired with a leadership venture that the Fellow launches and reports on across the programme. Fellowships convene at the Aspen campus and other locations worldwide. On graduation Fellows join the standing network, which convenes at the Resnick Aspen Action Forum and other gatherings and can compete for the McNulty Prize and Catalyst Fund awards.

Typical member

Fellows are established leaders, typically at an inflection point in their careers. The flagship Henry Crown Fellowship draws entrepreneurial private-sector leaders aged between 30 and 46; other fellowships in the network are organised by sector (finance, health, technology, arts and culture, civil society) or by region.

The AGLN is best understood as a values-and-service fellowship rather than a business network. The seminar method (Socratic dialogue on assigned readings) and the mandatory leadership venture are the distinguishing features, and they demand real time: roughly 24 to 25 seminar days over two years plus whatever the venture takes. Entry is by nomination only, which makes the network hard to approach cold. Two things are not disclosed publicly: what, if anything, Fellows pay, and how many nominations produce a place. Aspen states only that classes run 20 to 22 for the Henry Crown Fellowship. The regional and sector fellowships vary considerably in age band, cost structure and sponsorship, so the Henry Crown terms should not be assumed to apply across the network.

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