Letter from Dan Porterfield

The Aspen Institute is an optimistic institution—and a resilient one—especially in difficult times. And 2020 was a year of profound hardship. We grappled with a global pandemic, structural racism, economic turmoil, public mistrust, growing polarization, and a worsening climate crisis. And then, one week into the new year, a large group of violent insurrectionists mounted a deadly attack on the US Capitol with the goal of invalidating the legitimate outcome of the US presidential election.

Give NowNow what? America’s pluralism, political ideals, and economy should be sources of strength—but they don’t seem to be today. What can be done to restore democratic fellow-feeling and a sense of national direction?

There is no one answer, but given our world, the Aspen Institute’s mission is more important than ever.

Founded in 1950 with humanistic optimism and in the service of human dignity, we use many tools and methods to promote freedom, equity, and justice.

We support inclusive, open-minded dialogue among people with diverse views from varying walks of life. We convene leaders from all sectors to discern their core values and callings, and then recommit to public-spirited actions. And we bring people together to create practical progress on issues like education, economic inclusion, the environment, social trust, global security, and discrimination in its many forms.

These approaches are necessary to drive productive change for the one and the many, in the short term and the long term—and they made a difference in 2020, even though we couldn’t gather or work in person.

We published research that prevented evictions, advocated for better-paying jobs for frontline workers, published Covid-19 safety guidelines for food-service workers, and promoted policies to protect small businesses. We hosted the Aspen Ideas Festival free and online for the first time, attracting more than 100,000 participants. We launched new work in key areas, ranging from criminal justice to interreligious dialogue, from public health to youth leadership. And more.

Internally, our community came together over the past year to deepen our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion—critical for our society and for our organization. We’re developing new processes for assessing our operations and policies, strengthening our culture, and centering equity in our work. We’re elevating issues of justice across our programs and platforms, engaging in peer learning and best-practice sharing, and, as colleagues, addressing how our beliefs or behaviors may need to transform to address systemic and implicit biases. To do this work well—and to pursue it as a living commitment of the Institute—we recruited our first Vice President for People and Culture and are developing our first Action Plan to establish goals and drive progress. This is work not for one time but for all time, and is central to our calling and our mission.

I’m proud that the Aspen Institute didn’t simply hold it together amid 2020’s many financial and operational shocks, but rather we continued to make real and lasting impacts. I thank our many funders and donors for supporting us when it really mattered and look forward to our continued work together.

Thank you for your partnership.

 

 

 

 

Dan Porterfield
President and CEO