Tom Wilson
Chair, President, and CEO of The Allstate Corporation. Wilson has led Allstate as CEO since 2007 and as board chair since 2008, and he also serves as chair of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation.
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.
Trust-Building Starts With Shared Local Work, Not Political Reform
At the Aspen Ideas Festival, David Brooks of the Aspen Institute and Allstate chief executive Tom Wilson argued that America’s trust problem cannot be repaired first from Washington or by institutional reform alone. They described trust as a practice built through repeated local action: shared work, cross-generational contact, respect across disagreement, and everyday habits that make people feel seen. Their case was that politics is more likely to follow such a civic revival than lead it.
Eleven Collaborations Win $4.5 Million for Community Trust-Building
The Alliance for Social Trust and Allstate present the 2026 Trust in Practice Awards as an effort to fund and publicize trust-building as a practical discipline, not a civic sentiment. Tom Wilson says the awards are meant to show how trust can be designed into community engagement, while awardees describe that work as listening before acting, relying on local knowledge, building culturally accessible relationships, and sustaining repeated acts of connection under real community conditions.
Trust-Building Was Framed as Funded, Measurable Community Work
The 2026 Trust in Practice Summit highlights present trust-building as practical civic work that needs funding, tools, measurement, and local leadership, not simply a sentiment to be restored. Hosted in Chicago by the Alliance for Social Trust in partnership with Allstate, the summit convened more than 250 leaders and announced $1 million, $500,000, and $100,000 awards to 11 nonprofit collaborations across 10 states. Speakers argued that institutions should support community leaders, measure trust at a local level, and focus on the ordinary problem-solving through which trust is built.
Trust-Building Awards Draw $800 Million in Requests for $5 Million Pool
Allstate chief executive Tom Wilson used the 2026 Trust in Practice Summit in Chicago to argue that social trust should be treated as civic infrastructure that can be deliberately built, not as a vague cultural sentiment in decline. Announcing the inaugural Trust in Practice Awardees, Wilson said more than 1,600 proposals sought $800mn from a $5mn pool, evidence that community organizations are already trying to repair trust at scale but lack resources. The awards, he said, are intended to support and learn from local efforts that build trust through repeated action, shared purpose and relationships.
Trust in Practice Awards Fund 11 Local Trust-Building Collaborations
The 2026 Trust in Practice Summit, convened in Chicago by the Alliance for Social Trust with the Aspen Institute and Allstate, presented trust-building as practical local work that requires funding, measurement, institutional listening and community relationships. Speakers including Daniel Porterfield, Tom Wilson and others argued that pluralism and institutional trust depend less on national messaging than on leaders embedded in communities, while the summit’s awards and Trust Map were offered as tools to support that work.