Aspen España Seminar: “Transatlantic Values at a Crossroads: Contemporary Leadership Challenges”
The seminar was held in the historical town of Ronda in the mountains of Málaga, Spain, at the Real Maestranza de Ronda, on October 20-23, 2016. The event, organized in collaboration with The Aspen Institute US, consisted of approximately 25 participants from different countries. In the classic Aspen fashion, the discussions were based on readings (distributed in advance) by prominent authors, with an eye for discerning enduring values and assessing their adequacy for the leadership challenges each of us faces today.
For more than sixty years, the Aspen Executive Seminar on leadership, values and the good society has challenged leaders in every field to think more critically and deeply about the good society. The Aspen España Seminar, “Transatlantic Values at a Crossroads: Contemporary Leadership Challenges”, moderated by Todd Breyfogle, Director of Seminars for The Aspen Institute (US), uses Aspen’s proven method of text-based dialogue to offer participants a neutral forum in which to reflect on the current state and future of transatlantic, democratic capitalism in the context of timeless human values. Participants emerge from Aspen seminars personally renewed, professionally re-focused, and better prepared to lead as they confront the difficult economic and political choices before them.
In a setting conducive to thought and fellowship, each Aspen seminar convenes a diverse group of 20-25 leaders for lively, intensive roundtable discussions led by skilled moderators. Classic and contemporary texts reflecting the breadth of human civilization form the starting points of a rich conversation in which the questions posed by the group are frequently as illuminating as the varied, timeless wisdom of the texts. A substantial portion of the seminar readings are from Spanish and other European authors and are designed to help clarify our current predicament and to explore what courses of values-based action leaders might follow.
Texts to be considered include works by Cervantes, Ortega y Gasset, Mario Vargas Llosa, Rousseau, George Soros, Pope John Paul II, Amartya Sen, and Jean Monnet.
Seminar graduates report that they leave the seminar personally and professionally invigorated, more skilled in making decisions, and often so transformed by their experience that they chart a new course of action.
Who participates in the Aspen España Seminar?
• Top international leaders from all walks of life who are looking for a professional development program that focuses on questions rather than on answers.
• Successful leaders who want to clarify their core values as they strive to live more significant professional and personal lives.
• Visionary leaders who are looking to understand better the tensions inherent in conceptions of the good society.
•Concerned leaders who want to be challenged to think more deeply and act more justly.
The seminar was held in English.