Executive Director, The Aspen-Kern Program for Leadership and Character in Higher Education

ABOUT US

The Aspen Institute

The Aspen Institute is a global nonprofit organization committed to realizing a free, just, and equitable society. Since its founding in 1949, the Institute has been driving change through dialogue, leadership, and action to help solve the most critical challenges facing communities in the United States and around the world. Headquartered in Washington, DC, the Institute has a campus in Aspen, Colorado, and an international network of partners.

Commitment to Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

To achieve our mission of a more free, just, and equitable society, we commit to working proactively to advance the principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion across our myriad endeavors such as the recruitment, compensation, training, and advancement of staff. The best people-serving institutions make this commitment, and we seek to be a leader in the ways that we do so and learn from others. Visit our website to learn more about our commitment and recent actions taken toward building and nurturing a diverse and inclusive environment.

Leadership Division

The Leadership Division of the Aspen Institute builds off its 70-year history of developing leaders across generations and place to become more effective, values-based leaders. Today, the Division includes (1) the Seminars Department, (2) the Aspen Global Leadership Network; (3) Weave: The Social Fabric Project, which connects and supports grassroots community leaders.

The Seminars Department (Seminars) curates leadership seminars for individuals, external partners, and clients. The guiding principle of all Seminars programs is the belief that the problems we face in society are moral, not technical. As such, we must all take the time and the space to become more self-aware, self-correcting, and ultimately self-fulfilling individuals, in the sense of putting our talents in service to something greater than ourselves. The Seminars Department is responsible for hosting the Institute’s signature Aspen Executive Seminar on Leadership, Values, and the Good Society, The Justice and Society Seminar, and Custom Leadership Seminars for corporations and other organizations to meet their unique needs. The Department runs approximately 50 seminars each year; what unites them is a commitment to moral inquiry, open dialogue with diverse perspectives, and the exploration of human flourishing as we seek to lead ourselves and others.

Aspen-Kern Program for Leadership and Character in Higher Education

The Aspen-Kern Program for Leadership and Character in Higher Education seeks its inaugural Executive Director. A collaboration of the Aspen Institute and the Kern Family Foundation, this program seeks to support and embolden new college presidents (in their first to third years) of four-year institutions to embed and expand the non-technical elements of undergraduate education—liberal education directed toward character formation for democratic citizenship and greater human flourishing. In addition to providing character-based leadership development, the program will foster a greater understanding of the relationship between character and the purpose of education, a refined vocabulary for communicating the importance of character education, concrete support for applying and integrating insights into college life, and a cohort (and network) of mutual support and accountability to last a lifetime.

Building upon Aspen’s seven decades of humanities-based leadership development, the founding of more than a dozen fellowships across the globe, and existing work with college and university presidents, the Program will:

• build and connect a national cadre of servant leaders committed to undergraduate character education for democratic citizenship and greater human flourishing;
• foster a commitment to character education as a criterion for selection of college presidents;
• provide tangible support for the “how to” of leading an institution, incorporating character and flourishing in ways that are transformative for learners and teachers alike;
• disseminate existing and support current research on character education;
• provide national (and global) thought leadership about the role of character education in human flourishing.

The Program will select 20 new presidents of four-year institutions representing varied