Aspen is a place for leaders to lift their sights above the possessions which possess them. To confront their own nature as human beings, to regain control over their own humanity by becoming more self-aware, more self-correcting, and hence more self-fulfilling.

Walter P. Paepcke, Aspen Institute Co-Founder

Walton Family Foundation Commits $15 Million to Advance the Center for Rising Generations at the Aspen Institute

The three-year investment strengthens the Center for Rising Generations’ endowment and supports a new strategy group dedicated to the future of education, reflecting a shared commitment to expand opportunity for young people.

Washington, DC, and Bentonville, ARK., July 9 — The Walton Family Foundation and the Aspen Institute today announced a $15 million grant over three years to deepen the Institute’s work on behalf of young people and the future of American education. The investment includes:

For more than three decades, the Walton Family Foundation has worked to create access to opportunity for people and communities, with a particular focus on ensuring every child has a clear path to a good education and a future of their own choosing. That mission finds a natural partner in the Aspen Institute, the nonpartisan organization founded in 1949 to ignite human potential and help solve society’s greatest challenges through dialogue, leadership and action. And in the Center for Rising Generations at the Aspen Institute, which exists to ensure civil dialogue, civic engagement, and leadership development become a predictable part of the journey to adulthood in the U.S., and around the world. 

The $12 million gift will be added to the Center for Rising Generations’ endowment, building on the historic investment that established the Center in 2024 through the Bezos Family Foundation. This portion of the Walton Family Foundation’s gift helps contribute to a generous matching grant challenge established by the Bezos Family Foundation, which is structured as a dollar-for-dollar match, ensuring the resources to sustain CRG’s programming long into the future. Taken together, the gifts from both foundations represent a powerful long-term commitment to the Center’s model for investing in young people. 

“Young people want to be heard, trusted, and supported to lead. The Center for Rising Generations is helping make that possible, and we’re proud to help accelerate its work,” said Romy Drucker, Education Program Director at the Walton Family Foundation.

“Investing in young people’s leadership is one of the most important things any institution can do right now,” said Maria Laura Acebal, Interim President and CEO of the Aspen Institute. “This generous commitment from the Walton Family Foundation, alongside the continued partnership of the Bezos Family Foundation, will strengthen the Center for Rising Generations’ impact. I’m grateful to the entire Walton team, and confident this investment will pay dividends for young people, and for our country, for decades to come.”

“Since we launched the Center for Rising Generations, we’ve worked to expand and broaden access to opportunity for young people, and to help institutions around them, including schools, employers, and organizations, build the infrastructure to support them,” said Kaya Henderson, Executive Vice President of the Aspen Institute and Executive Director of the Center for Rising Generations. “This investment from the Walton Family Foundation allows us to keep bridging those two worlds at scale, strengthening CRG’s endowment for the future, giving the Rising Generations Strategy Group the resources to bring people together across our divides, and putting young people’s ideas on the Aspen Ideas Festival stage. We are deeply grateful to Romy and the Walton Family Foundation for believing in this work.”

Since its founding, the Center for Rising Generations has supported young people around the world, hosting its national Rising Generations Summit (RGS) and a series of events that bring researchers and young people together to spark new ideas; supporting two cohorts of CRG Associates, early career professionals who partner directly with Aspen Institute programs to advance meaningful projects; launching a Youth Advisory Council (YAC) that puts young people’s voices at the core of the Center’s strategy; and using storytelling to showcase what young people can accomplish when they’re trusted with leadership. This work builds on the powerful portfolio of youth-centered programs that now form part of CRG, including the Aspen Challenge, the Center for Native American Youth (CNAY), the Stevens Initiative, and the Education & Society Program – each a proven model for investing in young people’s leadership and potential. That growth has been deliberate, building a foundation designed for sustainable scale, and this new investment will allow CRG to deepen that work in the years ahead.

The $3 million grant to the Rising Generations Strategy Group will support a new initiative of the Education & Society Program, led by former CEO of Chicago Public Schools Dr. Janice K. Jackson. Inspired by the Aspen Institute’s longstanding strategy group model, the Rising Generations Strategy group, co-chaired by former Secretary of Commerce, Gina Raimondo, and former U.S. Senator from North Carolina, Richard Burr, will convene intergenerational leaders from across political and ideological lines to surface innovative solutions and build durable consensus around the future of education, working toward a shared commitment to ensuring that every young person is prepared to lead, work and participate fully in a rapidly changing world. 

The Walton Family Foundation also supports the Aspen Ideas Festival, the Institute’s flagship public gathering of leaders, thinkers, and doers, helping ensure that the perspectives and ideas of rising generations remain central to its programming.

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About the Aspen Institute
The Aspen Institute is a global nonprofit organization whose purpose is to ignite human potential to build understanding and create new possibilities for a better world. Founded in 1949, the Institute drives change through dialogue, leadership, and action to help solve society’s greatest challenges. It is headquartered in Washington, DC and has a campus in Aspen, Colorado, as well as an international network of partners. For more information, visit www.aspeninstitute.org. 

About the Center for Rising Generations

The Center for Rising Generations (CRG) at the Aspen Institute connects young people to real leadership opportunities across communities, institutions, and systems, and builds the ecosystem of partners, proof points, and support that moves employers, policymakers, and organizations to open more doors. Through storytelling, events, leadership development, and cross-sector partnerships, CRG works to make youth leadership a predictable, embedded part of how institutions operate. For more information, visit: www.risinggenerations.org.

About the Walton Family Foundation

The Walton Family Foundation is, at its core, a family-led foundation. Three generations of descendants of founders Sam and Helen Walton, and their spouses, work together to lead the foundation and create access to opportunity for people and communities. The foundation works in three areas: improving education, protecting rivers and oceans and the communities they support, and investing in its home region of Northwest Arkansas and the Arkansas-Mississippi Delta. Learn more at waltonfamilyfoundation.org.