The Aspen Institute

Global Leaders Named as Jurors for Inaugural John P. McNulty Prize 

Washington, DC, April 1, 2008––The Aspen Institute is proud to announce that Virgin Group chairman and philanthropist Sir Richard Branson; Mary Robinson, the first female President of Ireland and former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights; and Olara Otunnu, the President of LBL Foundation for Children and former UN Under-Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, will be serving as jurors for the John P. McNulty Prize. Meant to celebrate the spirit and memory of John P. McNulty by supporting extraordinary young leaders making creative, effective and lasting contributions to their communities, the $100,000 prize will be awarded for the first time in November 2008 to an Aspen Global Leadership Network (AGLN) Fellow to help further his or her outstanding initiative.

“We’re immensely honored that these jurors—who are themselves inspiring leaders—will be helping to award and celebrate the next generation of entrepreneurial leaders contributing to society,” said Anne Welsh McNulty, co-founder and managing partner of JBK Partners and trustee of the Aspen Institute.

To be considered for the award, the applicant must be an AGLN Fellow with an active project underway for at least two years that has a demonstrated record of success, and must apply at www.mcnultyprize.org before the April 15, 2008 deadline. All AGLN Fellows are between the ages of 25 and 50 at time of selection, have proven themselves through success in their respective fields, have spent weeks in dialogue with others in their cohort on leadership, values and “the good society,” and have committed to putting their ideas into action through a leadership project in their communities and countries. And all have participated in one of the Institute’s following initiatives:

• Henry Crown Fellowship Program
• Africa Leadership Initiative
• Central America Leadership Initiative
• India Leadership Initiative
• Nigeria Leadership Initiative
• Liberty Fellowship Program
• Catto Fellowship Program
• Aspen Institute-NewSchools Fellowship: Entrepreneurial Leaders for Public Education Program
• Aspen Institute-Rodel Fellowships in Public Leadership

Fellows take on high impact projects as part of the Fellowship experience. Projects are designed to mobilize the energies, skills and the resources of Fellows to address the foremost social, economic and political challenges of their countries—and their times. As such, an integral part of the experience is the performance of a leadership project by each of the Fellows during the fellowship period. In designing and implementing these projects, it is expected that the Fellows will engage their personal passion, address a pressing need, be innovative and distinctive, make a real difference, and promote the values the Fellow holds most dear.

With over 700 Fellows around the globe and growing, the impact of these projects to make the world a better place is growing exponentially. Here are just a few examples of Fellows’ projects:

• A citizens’ newspaper called Mi Periodico (My Paper), which gives ordinary Guatemalan citizens a voice by allowing them to submit stories and opinions, and is accompanied by blog for them to report corruption and comment on social issues.
• A Credit Union to promote community reinvestment and saving among the working poor in the Mississippi Delta region.
• Agora Partners, an organization that operates a for-profit venture capital fund and a non-profit consulting firm that provides small entrepreneurs in Nicaragua with tools, networks, financing and support.
• A project employing a network of beauty salons throughout Ghana to educate women on HIV/AIDS prevention.
• A project in South Africa using the children’s love of soccer to encourage them to stay in school while providing them with educational support.
• A skills training center in India to help young Indians gain employment by offering them marketable skills and job placement with respected companies.

For more information about John McNulty’s legacy of leadership, guidelines to submission, an online application, a film featuring projects that reflect the spirit of the annual prize, and the latest news, please visit http://www.mcnultyprize.org/index.html. 

The Aspen Global Leadership Network is a worldwide community of entrepreneurial business, government and civil society leaders committed to values-based leadership. Through its programs, the AGLN is spurring these leaders—Fellows—to move from success to significance and from thought to action by tackling the foremost societal challenges of our times. Collectively, the 700 Fellows from 36 countries that currently comprise the AGLN have the potential to make a measurable impact on some of the world’s most intractable issues. More information on AGLN is available at www.aspeninstitute.org/agln.

The Aspen Institute, founded in 1950, is an international nonprofit organization dedicated to fostering enlightened leadership and open-minded dialogue. Through seminars, policy programs, conferences and leadership development initiatives, the Institute and its international partners seek to promote nonpartisan inquiry and an appreciation for timeless values. The Institute is headquartered in Washington, DC, and has campuses in Aspen, Colorado, and on the Wye River near the shores of the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland. Its international network includes partner Aspen Institutes in Berlin, Rome, Lyon, Tokyo, New Delhi, and Bucharest, and leadership initiatives in Africa, Central America, and India.

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