Tom Halverson

Leadership’s Long-Term Test Is What Communities Can Keep

At Aspen Ideas: Economy in Tulsa, Edward Jones managing partner Penny Pennington and CoBank CEO Tom Halverson offered different accounts of what leaders owe the next generation. Pennington argued that ownership, financial education and sustained local investment can help people build lasting opportunity; Halverson pointed to cooperative institutions and warned that fiscal and economic pressures could narrow future generations’ choices. Both measured leadership by whether the institutions and conditions leaders leave behind can keep working after they are gone.