The Aspen Institute

Kalissa Hendrickson serves as Managing Director of Executive Leadership Seminars at the Aspen Institute, a nonpartisan organization that drives change through dialogue, leadership, and action. She regularly works with CEOs, senior teams, executive boards, government officials, military personnel, and educators to help them become more self-aware and more self-correcting leaders by identifying and amplifying their core values. Two fundamental principles underscore her approach to working with leaders in the corporate, government, and not-for-profit space: the conviction that knowledge sharing is a primary driving force for social good and the belief that all individuals crave lifelong learning and growth. As such, in her body of work she continuously strives to create brave spaces in which education and inspiration are harnessed to fuel change at the level of the individual, the organization, and in society.

In her current role at the Institute, Kalissa works at the crossroads of leadership development and executive education via Socratic dialogue and humanities-based inquiry. Each year her team delivers a diverse portfolio of virtual and in-person leadership seminars both domestically and abroad. Her entrepreneurial approach to expand the scope of Aspen Seminars by embedding values-based leadership practices inside large institutions has resulted in leadership seminars with organizations such as Microsoft, Meta, Centers for Disease Control, and the University of Chicago, among others. In addition to overseeing the department, developing external partnerships, program design, and serving as a spokesperson the Institute’s values-based leadership work, Kalissa is also a seminar moderator, regularly moderating Aspen Leadership Seminars including the flagship Aspen Executive Seminar on Leadership, Values, and the Good Society.

Prior to joining the Institute, Kalissa taught literature and composition at Arizona State University (ASU) where she earned her Ph.D. in English literature with a specialty in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century drama. Her scholarly work has been published and presented at conferences including the Shakespeare Association of America and American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies annual conference. While at ASU she co-founded and served as co-president of the Graduate Women’s Association, an award-winning organization dedicated to providing women and minority graduate students advanced professionalization resources and opportunities. A former aspiring symphony musician, she earned her bachelor’s degree in music performance from Northwestern University. She currently resides in Washington D.C. with her husband and dog.