The Aspen Institute
The Aspen Institute is a global nonprofit founded in 1949 that works toward a free, just, and equitable society through dialogue, leadership, and action on challenges facing the United States and the world.
Interpersonal Trust Tracks Civic Engagement More Closely Than Institutional Confidence
Pew Research Center’s analysis groups Americans into four patterns of civic engagement, and finds that the clearest divide among them is not confidence in government or national news but trust in other people. Elisa Shearer, a Pew senior researcher, said the survey cannot establish whether trust leads people to participate or participation builds trust. Practitioners on a panel convened by the Alliance for Social Trust and the Pew-Knight Initiative argued that reliable relationships, meaningful opportunities to act and visible results can help strengthen civic connection.
Better Work Depends on the Systems and Labor Beneath It
Closing the WIN Summit, Aspen Digital’s acting executive director Konstanze Frischen argued that better work depends on often-invisible systems and the people who build and sustain them. She thanked the partners and teams behind the event, then cast participants as a bridge between the ideas shared at the summit and new practices in the real world.
Women Founders Receive 2% of Venture Capital as Investment Concentrates
At the WIN Summit, venture investors Anna Mason of Ingeborg Investments and Miriam Rivera of Ulu Ventures argued that the small share of venture capital going to women founders reflects how capital is allocated, not a shortage of viable ideas. They said the gap begins upstream, with limited investment in women-led funds, and extends to the kinds of businesses and needs investors recognize as markets. Their case for investing in women also rests on the economic consequences: who receives capital shapes who can build companies, create wealth and remain in the workforce.
Three Initiatives Target Employers, Entertainment, and Utah’s Gender Gap
Three projects recognized through the Workplace Innovation Now Challenge argue that changing how care and motherhood are understood can help women thrive at work. SHRM Foundation plans to frame caregiver support as a business concern for employers; Caring Across Generations is building an entertainment company to bring caregiving into popular culture; and Sego Leadership will examine Utah’s narratives about motherhood and work. The awardees presented their approaches at the WIN Summit, with each targeting a different audience and route to change.
Three WIN Projects Target Workplace Conditions Behind Gender Inequality
At the WIN Summit, three of the WIN Challenge’s 18 awardees argued that helping women thrive at work requires changing workplace systems, not just preparing individual workers to manage barriers. The Shift Project is targeting scheduling software that makes shifts unpredictable; WorkLife Law plans to connect pregnant workers with legal protections through healthcare providers; and Affordable Homes of South Texas is making safe job sites a condition of placing women in construction roles.
Career Pauses and Caregiving Are Reshaping How Employers Define Ambition
At the WIN Summit in New York, author and Power Pause founder Neha Ruch argued that parents need a broader definition of ambition—one that allows people to change their hours or pause paid work without being treated as having given up on their careers. She said employers must make work compatible with caregiving across different jobs and stages of life, while recognizing that flexibility and leave are not equally accessible to all workers. W.K. Kellogg Foundation program officer Jonathan Njus added that policies need a culture of visible support, including fathers who take leave and care for their children.
Three Workplace Barriers Keep Caregivers From Working and Advancing
At the WIN Summit in New York, awardees of the Workplace Innovation Now Challenge argued that helping women thrive at work requires changes to how communities and employers provide, recognize and pay for care. Coastal Enterprises, Inc. is helping women build child care businesses; the National Alliance for Caregiving is developing a voluntary way for employees to share caregiving responsibilities with employers; and United Way of Southeastern Idaho is splitting child care costs among families, employers and community or public contributors.
A Sustainable Care System Must Work for Families and Workers
At the WIN Summit, Olympic bobsledder Elana Meyers Taylor described the caregivers who helped make her athletic career and family life possible—and the limits of a system that many families cannot afford. Taylor argued that access to care and fair pay for care workers must be addressed together; Ai-jen Poo, executive director of Caring Across Generations, called for affordable, quality care and good jobs for the people who provide it.
Women’s Workforce Gains Stall as Caregiving Burdens Persist
Kim Parker, managing director of the Pew Research Center, argues that women’s gains in education, employment and earnings have not brought equal footing at work or at home. Drawing on Pew data, she traces how women continue to carry more of the work of raising children, supporting adult children and caring for older relatives—and face greater career, financial and health costs as a result.
Joy Can Survive Alongside Suffering, Without Turning Pain Into a Lesson
Kate Bowler argues that joy can coexist with pain and incompleteness, rather than serving as proof that life is going well. Peter H. Reynolds’s stories of a teacher’s encouragement and his son’s presence amid crisis likewise show how attention to what others offer can make room for creativity and hope without erasing hardship.
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.
Smaller Cities Draw Investment When Business Cases Meet Local Readiness
Attracting investment requires more than a promising business case: communities also need the services, infrastructure and financing to support businesses and workers. Heartland Forward’s Brian Kelsey and McKinsey’s Dominic Williams emphasized local priorities and the conditions that allow projects and people to take hold; CoBank CEO Tom Halverson said investments must be commercially viable. Enid Mayor David Mason described the difficulty of building amenities that may help recruitment succeed while facing rising costs and constrained municipal revenue.
Without Congressional Action, Social Security Can Pay Just 78% of Scheduled Benefits
Social Security’s projected trust-fund depletion around 2032 would trigger benefit cuts under current law, not bankruptcy: without congressional action, the program could pay about 78% of scheduled benefits. In an Aspen Ideas discussion, former Social Security deputy commissioner Jason Fichtner and economist Kathryn Edwards agree that the program needs reform but differ on the source of its shortfall: Fichtner stresses demographic pressures, while Edwards points to a weakened wage-based revenue base. Their debate is over how to preserve the program and fairly distribute the costs.
Cherokee Nation Ties Economic Growth to Cultural Continuity
Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin argues that economic success should be measured not only in jobs and revenue but in whether Cherokee communities, language and traditions can endure. In a conversation with PBS’s William Brangham, Hoskin points to the Nation’s roughly $3 billion annual economic impact while warning that growth can bypass rural communities where Cherokee culture is sustained. He says long-term prosperity depends on investing in people and public services, and making opportunity reachable without treating cultural continuity as secondary.
Rural Entrepreneurship Depends on Local Capacity, Not Just Capital
Rural entrepreneurship requires more than investment: communities need the capacity and coordination to put capital to work locally. Derek Kilmer of the Rockefeller Foundation identifies capital, capacity and coordination as essential; Danielle Samalin of the Center on Rural Innovation adds connections and argues that housing belongs in economic-development planning from the start. In Bozeman, Mayor Joey Morrison described technology investment as raising the prospect of new jobs while intensifying pressure on affordability and local businesses.
Health Equity Is Economic Infrastructure for Local Communities
At Aspen Ideas: Economy in Tulsa, Tulsa health adviser Jabraan Pasha argued that health and economic opportunity shape one another: income and neighborhood conditions affect health, while health influences people’s ability to learn, work and participate in the economy. Alongside Morgan Stanley’s Kim Henderson and Cherokee Nation deputy secretary of state Canaan Duncan, Pasha made the case for treating investments in food access, transportation, childcare and community spaces as part of building healthier communities and expanding economic mobility.
Honest Narrowed Its Product Focus to Build Financial Resilience
At The Honest Company, CEO Carla Vernón says transformation required narrowing the business before it could grow: when she took over in 2023, she focused the financially strained company on a smaller set of product categories and set out to strengthen its business practices. In a WIN Summit fireside chat with Forbes editor Maggie McGrath, Vernón argued that lasting change also depends on candid communication and clear priorities, with employees—not technology alone—driving the work.
Women-Owned Businesses Generate $224 Billion, but Capture Less Than 1% of Corporate Spending
Women-owned companies are creating jobs and building businesses, but they remain largely shut out of corporate supply chains and face steep barriers to capital, the speakers at Aspen Ideas: Economy in Tulsa argued. Moderated by Angela Dingle, the discussion made the case that helping more women build lasting wealth requires more than founder grit: buyers, investors and business networks must give women-led companies practical access to contracts, funding and the relationships needed to scale.
Employers Shift the Risks of Fluctuating Demand Onto Workers
New Pew Research Center data show that many Americans are struggling to afford basic costs even as headline economic indicators look strong. In a discussion at Aspen Ideas: Economy, economist Jonathan Morduch and labor economist Kathryn Edwards argue that annual figures obscure the week-to-week volatility many workers face, often because their hours and pay fluctuate. They say that instability shifts business risk onto households and cannot be solved by budgeting advice alone; greater predictability and worker bargaining power are needed.
Youth Investments Work When Assets Come With Education and Support
At Aspen Ideas: Economy, MyPath’s Ariana Arana Bermudez, Harlem Children’s Zone CEO Kwame Owusu-Kesse, Ford Foundation disability-rights director Rebecca Cokley and WE GOT US NOW founder Ebony Underwood argue that youth investment works only when young people help shape it and can use the resources offered. Their examples—from savings accounts and disability benefits to the costs borne by children with incarcerated parents—show how disconnected systems can make opportunity inaccessible. They call for sustained investment that pairs assets with practical support and responds to young people’s lived circumstances.
350 Young People Will Take Festival Ideas Back to Their Communities
At Aspen Ideas: Economy in Tulsa, Aspen Institute leaders Ida Rademacher and Kaya Henderson cast the coming generation’s economic future as a responsibility that must be carried beyond the conference. Rademacher described the transition to the institute’s Rising Generations gathering as a hand-off; Henderson said young attendees would take ideas from the festival back to their communities and convene youth-led discussions. Their account makes the case that preparing young people to engage with economic and social questions is part of what leaders owe the next generation.
Local Networks Help Communities Turn Relationships Into Shared Opportunity
At Aspen Ideas: Economy in Tulsa, Tommy Loper of the Aspen Institute argues that communities can have many programs yet remain “systems poor” if the organizations behind them lack strong relationships. In a Tulsa nonprofit cohort, network mapping showed a 120% increase in collaborative links, 90% of them between organizations working together for the first time, Loper said. He argues that building these connections helps communities make better use of existing institutions and tackle shared problems.
Meeting Rising Power Demand Requires More Than Building Generation
At Aspen Ideas: Economy in Tulsa, ONE Gas CEO Sid McAnnally argued that meeting rising electricity demand requires treating energy sources as complements, not rivals—and distinguishing generation from the infrastructure needed to deliver power affordably and reliably. Commonwealth Fusion Systems CFO Lorence Kim and Cornerstone Government Affairs principal Mark Yates added that the choices involve more than technology: grid connections, local economic benefits and policy stability will shape which projects get built and who benefits.
Housing Stability Depends on Affordability, Financing, and Resilience
Housing stability, the participants at Aspen Ideas: Economy argued, depends on more than whether a family rents or owns: it requires homes people can afford to stay in and the financial support to withstand shocks. Samir Goel of Esusu, Jeff Hall of the Anne and Henry Zarrow Foundation, and Kristen Scheyder of Citi Foundation made the case for pairing housing production and preservation with tools such as rent reporting, emergency savings and flexible financing. They cautioned that credit-building alone cannot prevent displacement or make housing affordable.