Allied Forces

The Aspen Global Leadership Network promotes alliances among problem solvers.

Give NowIn January 2020, fellows across the Aspen Global Leadership Network convened in Jordan for a seminar on leading in an era of globalization. Fellows from China, feeling the first waves of the pandemic, rang alarm bells around the seminar table that life was about to change. One person on the receiving end of that message was Henry Crown fellow Dayna Frank, the president and CEO of First Avenue Productions, Minnesota’s leading concert promoter and venue operator. She began to warn the live-music ecosystem of venue owners and artists about what was coming.

In April, Frank founded the National Independent Venue Alliance, a new organization that brought the live entertainment industry’s leaders, artists, promoters, venue managers, and festival operators together to address the dire impacts of the industry’s complete shutdown. The alliance became the driving force behind lobbying and grassroots efforts to pass the bipartisan Save Our Stages Act, which was signed into law on December 27, 2020. At the Jordan seminar, Frank met Finance Leaders fellow Clay Grubb, and they partnered to launch the Live Venue Recovery Fund to provide expertise and capital to keep independent venues independent.

The impact doesn’t stop there. The Henry Crown Fellowship accelerated alumni engagement efforts and launched initiatives centered on creating impact, inspiration, and interconnectivity. Between alumni programming and virtual class reunions, more than 90 percent of fellows engaged with the fellowship since March 2020. Zoom provided the confidential space to unpack important challenges as well as opportunities to lend advice and resources to those addressing needs in their communities. These are all powerful examples of why, in 2020, Renée and Lester Crown created the new Henry Crown Fellowship Alumni Engagement Endowment.