Aspen Seminar on Leadership in Cartagena, Colombia
The Aspen Institute Initiative for Colombia and Aspen Institute España inaugurated the first edition of the Aspen Seminar on Leadership, sponsored by the McNulty Foundation, in Cartagena, Colombia on the 6th to the 8th of March, 2020. The seminar brought together a group of about twenty participants by invitation only and was moderated by José M. de Areilza, Secretary General of Aspen Institute España and Professor and Jean Monnet Chair at ESADE Business School of Ramon Llull University in Barcelona, and Miguel Herrero de Jáuregui, Associate Professor of Classics at the University of Complutense of Madrid and Aspen España Fellow.
Through Socratic text-based dialogue, the seminar set out to encourage participants to think about the opportunities and challenges that face open societies and what is required to promote values-based leadership in a world of accelerated changes in the economy and society, and flaring tensions between local and global interests. The seminar brought together a group of participants from different sectors of civil society and government to form a diverse and balanced space in which to reflect on the current and future state of society.
The newly established Aspen Institute Initiative for Colombia was created to foster enlightened leadership that can make a moral and intellectual contribution to the development of society in Colombia and around the world. The effort was launched in 2019 by highly regarded leaders in the political, business, academic, media, and non-profit worlds.
Some of the topics that the seminar touched upon are power and leadership, intergenerational justice, economic and technological change, and the future of democracy.
The purpose of each seminar is not so much to reach specific conclusions or solutions to the questions posed during the debates. Instead, the aim is to inspire new questions through an exchange of opinions and perspectives that reveal the underlying ideals and tensions of a leadership committed to the common good.
Each participant took the time to read in advance and enjoy a weekend away from the distractions of everyday life. Participants left the seminar personally renewed, professionally refocused, and better prepared to face difficult decisions in their roles as values-based leaders.
Moderators
José M. de Areilza is Secretary General of the Aspen Institute España. He is a Professor and Jean Monnet Chair at the ESADE Business School of Ramon Llull University in Barcelona, with a double appointment in the Department of Law and in the Department of General Management and Strategy. This year he is a Visiting Professor at INSEAD Business School, MBA Program, Fontainebleau campus. He has been an Advisor on European and North American affairs in the Spanish Prime Minister’s Office. He writes a weekly column on international affairs in the newspaper ABC. He is a Senior Research Fellow at Real Instituto Elcano and Member of the European Council on Foreign Relations. He serves as President of the British-Spanish Tertulias (UK-Spain Forum) and a Trustee of the Spanish Navy Museum. In 2014 he published the book “Law and Power in the European Union” and more recently an essay on wine in the Iberian Peninsula. José M. de Areilza holds an LL.B. degree with a Special Graduation Prize from Complutense University of Madrid, a Doctorate Juridical Sciences (S.J.D.), and a Masters of Laws (LL.M.) from Harvard University and Master in International Relations (M.A.) from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. In 1991 he was admitted to the New York Bar.
Miguel Herrero de Jáuregui is an Associate Professor of Classics at the University of Complutense in Madrid. As a classicist and historian of religion, he deals mainly with ancient Greek culture and its Christian reception. He has worked as a researcher in the Max Planck Institut für Europäische Rechtsgeschichte and in the universities of Harvard, Oxford, Zürich, and Bologna, and has lectured as invited professor in various academic institutions in English, German, French, Italian, and Spanish. He is the author, among other works, of the book Orphism and Christianity in Late Antiquity (2010), Tracing Orpheus (2011), Redefining Dionysos (2013), and of the commented edition of the 16th cent. Latin version of Aristotle’s Politics by Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda was used to justify the Spanish conquest of America (2013). Besides his academic activity, Miguel has collaborated as a seminar moderator with Aspen Institute España and has worked as a technical advisor for the Madrid Regional Government in the fields of Higher Education and Scientific Research.