Gathering with Other Foundation Leaders at the Aspen Institute by Gary Steuer

This month I had the pleasure of participating in the Seminar for Mid-America Foundation CEOs in Aspen, a program of the Aspen Institute. This is a unique and highly rewarding program that I try to attend each year.

It has been operating for about 25 years and is intentionally designed to bring together a small cohort of foundation leaders from the middle of the country, on the premise that the largest coastal foundations have their own networks, and that foundations from the middle of the country (defined expansively, from the Deep South to the Midwest, to the Mountain West and Southwest) often have common issues that can transcend size and geography, and are predominantly place-based rather than national or international in scope.

It is an extremely diverse group of leaders representing communities from Detroit to rural Texas, from Montana to St. Louis, from Colorado to Mississippi. While the content of the conversations remains confidential, I can share that there is incredible value in being in a learning community with this intimate group of powerful, thoughtful, committed leaders. We are all facing how to respond to the acute challenges of these times, and our jobs can also sometimes be surprisingly lonely, even as we acknowledge the privilege that comes with our positions.

It is helpful to see the commonalities of the issues we face, to share how we have responded, and to learn new strategies and approaches. I was grateful for the participation of a few local Colorado colleagues: Rene Ferrufino from the Women’s Foundation of Colorado, Jeff Carlson of the Weld Trust, and Linda Reiner of Caring for Colorado.

While in Aspen I was also able to catch the wonderful new exhibition at the Resnick Center for Herbert Bayer Studies, devoted to the three-dimensional work of Bayer, including his design of the natural environment of Aspen Meadows. (The show was co-curated by the artist Koko Bayer, his granddaughter.) There is also another exhibition on the campus that explores Bayer’s groundbreaking design 70 years ago of the “World Geo-Graphic Atlas.” (edited)