Leadership Programs

Commencement Celebration

Inaugural India Leadership Initiative Celebrates Commencement

 


ILI Fellow Ravi Krishnan makes some
remarks during the graduation ceremony.

From February 16-20, 2008 the inaugural class of India Leadership Initiative (ILI) Fellows convened in Kovalam, India for their final seminar -- The Promise of Leadership, where they celebrated the completion of the formal program and the commencement of the next phase of their lives as values-based leaders with renewed commitment.

The inaugural ILI class comprises 22 highly-accomplished Indian leaders ("ILI Fellows") between the ages of 30-45 at the time of selection, and drawn from the country's entrepreneurial business, government, and NGO sectors -- including six specially selected Goldman Sachs Aspen India Fellows.

During the ILI program, Fellows meet four times over 18 months, for multi-day leadership seminars in India and Aspen, Colorado. Each Fellow also undertook a high-impact leadership project of his or her design.  All of this is aimed to help propel these very accomplished leaders "from success to significance" in their communities and country and prepare them to tackle the most pressing issues faced by their societies.

In the Promise of Leadership seminar, the ILI Fellows thought about their personal legacies, facing good and evil in the world, and took a journey of introspection into the next chapter of their lives. 

They also discussed their goals for their projects which ranged from one that will bring successful artists to work with women and girl artisans in rural communities to help them gain income, a website designed to raise awareness of global warming with concrete actions to help reduce it, a low cost insurance plan to allow the very poor to access health care, and several vocational training initiatives aimed at helping people develop skills for jobs.

 


ILI Fellows break from the seminar room
to explore Kovalam Backwaters.

The ILI Fellows join nearly 700 other Fellows from 36 countries, who form the Aspen Global Leadership Network (AGLN). AGLN Fellows have completed the Henry Crown Fellowship Program or a similar Fellowship that encourages highly accomplished participants to put their creative ideas into action toward tackling the leading challenges of our time.

The India Leadership Initiative is a collaborative undertaking between the Aspen Institute US, the Aspen Institute India and the Goldman Sachs Global Markets Institute to help foster the next generation of values-based leaders in India. The initiative is modeled after the Henry Crown Fellowship Program and uses the time-tested Aspen method of text-based dialogue. The Aspen Institute supports leadership initiatives in 13 countries in Africa and Central America, as well as in India and the U.S.