Brian Hooks
Brian Hooks is chairman and CEO of Stand Together, a philanthropic community focused on bottom-up approaches to social challenges. He is also president of the Charles Koch Foundation and co-author with Charles Koch of Believe in People: Bottom-Up Solutions for a Top-Down World. Hooks is a public voice for Be the People, a civic initiative aimed at encouraging Americans to contribute to solving community problems.
The American Dream Depends on Rebuilding Trust in Institutions
At the Aspen Ideas Festival, business and civic leaders argued that the American dream remains politically useful only if it is treated as unfinished work rather than a settled promise. Samantha Tweedy, Tom Wilson, Brian Hooks and Skye Perryman differed on how much responsibility business should bear, but tied declining trust in institutions to unequal access to opportunity, economic insecurity and threats to democratic rights. Their shared case was that rebuilding the dream requires concrete institutional action, local problem-solving and a broader account of freedom than markets or formal rights alone can provide.
A 10-Year Civic Campaign Aims to Turn Local Trust Into Action
At the Aspen Ideas Festival, Heather Gerken, Brian Hooks, Jane Wales and other civic and philanthropic leaders cast Be the People as a decade-long effort to counter civic isolation by reconnecting Americans with local problem-solving. Their argument is that Americans retain more trust, generosity and desire to contribute than national political narratives suggest, but need institutions, cultural messengers and community organizations that make that shared agency visible and usable.