Maria Acebal
Maria Laura Acebal is the Aspen Institute’s Interim President and CEO through October 2026, and its Executive Vice President for Strategy and Corporate Secretary. Her previous leadership roles include CEO of the Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network and executive positions at Ashoka. ([aspeninstitute.org](https://www.aspeninstitute.org/people/maria-laura-acebal/?utm_source=openai))
Tulsa’s Current Boom Is Shaped by a History of Growth and Loss
The Aspen Ideas: Economy gathering in Tulsa asked how economic change reaches different communities, who benefits from growth and what prosperity makes possible. Experience Tulsa’s Grant Bumgarner placed the city’s current growth in the context of its Native history, oil boom and the destruction of Black Wall Street and rebuilding after the 1921 massacre. That history, the speakers argued, makes economic change inseparable from questions of who benefits, who bears its costs and what growth enables.
The Aspen Institute Frames Leadership as Dialogue Across Difference
In a 75th-anniversary institutional statement, the Aspen Institute presents leadership as a discipline of listening, convening and acting across difference. Its executives argue that progress begins with people: dialogue builds common ground and trust, and that trust can be turned toward work on economic opportunity, energy and climate challenges, institutions and rising generations. President and chief executive Dan Porterfield closes the case as an invitation to “ignite human potential” and create new possibilities for a better world.