The Canvas of Leadership
The Aspen Institute’s Leadership Seminars department is proud to announce our 2025 Cover Art Contest.
Leadership takes many forms — in action, in reflection, and, this year, in art.
The Aspen Leadership Seminars are proud to announce the winners of the 2025 Canvas of Leadership Cover Art Contest, an annual celebration of artistic expression inspired by the timeless question
The Canvas of Leadership: 2025 Cover Art Contest
This contest celebrates the power of visual art to provoke thought, deepen inquiry, and ground us in shared humanity. Whether through painting, photography, mixed media, or graphic design, this cover art contest welcomes works that address one or more of the following themes:
- Leading forward
- Humanistic leadership
- Fortify and undeceive ourselves
- Intentional dialogue
This year’s contest drew 56 submissions from artists across the United States — from Aspen, Colorado to New York City, representing a wide range of perspectives, mediums, and experiences.
Each work offered a powerful reflection on what it means to lead, connect, and create meaning in today’s world
Grand Prize Winner
Description: When it comes to leadership, sometimes all it takes is for one brave person to turn around and go the opposite direction. When you decides to go a different path, a new direction, it can feel scary and intimating at first. Sooner or later, that brave soul will inspire others from all walks of life to follow in their footsteps. Trusting in yourself and making decisions confidently is what makes people great leaders. You never know who you’re inspiring.
Shaylin Wallace (Washington, DC)
Shaylin Wallace is a Jamaican-American artist from Wilmington, Delaware, now based in Washington, DC. She turns ordinary images into extraordinary surreal masterpieces, collaging together her innermost thoughts, feelings and imaginative ideas. Her works of art capture the divine connection between humans, nature, and the universe. Wallace excels in many artistic mediums including abstract illustration, photography, and graphic design. She uses art as a way to connect and communicate her deepest thoughts and emotions. As a 21st Century renaissance woman, her legacy is to create the unimaginable and to inspire others to follow their dreams.
Finalists
Description: My artwork visually interprets leadership as a collective journey fueled by thought and intentional dialogue. The composition weaves together maps, human figures, and geometric elements to symbolize exploration, growth, and the fortification of ideas. The central axis of the design evokes a compass, reminding us that true leadership requires direction, clarity, and the courage to navigate uncertainty.
By layering archival images with contemporary graphic elements, I aimed to reflect both history and forward movement—acknowledging 75 years of impact while looking ahead to the possibilities of tomorrow. The scattered nodes, lines, and circles represent conversations: diverse, intersecting, and transformative. These exchanges ignite human potential, build understanding, and create new possibilities for a better world.
Eduardo Mejia González (Washington, DC)
Artist Bio: I am a Visual Art Designer and Photographer, specializing in the creation and development of brand concepts, online advertising, and social media marketing. My experience includes collaborating with various brands on branding projects, commercial and artistic photography, social media content creation, and editorial material design.
Throughout my career, I have honed my ability to develop hybrid visual pieces that combine graphic design, photography, and art to create engaging and effective content.
I hold a Master’s degree in Advertising and a Bachelor’s degree in Graphic Design, which have provided me with a solid theoretical and practical foundation in design and visual communication
Description: Night sky watching helps us to easily understand the infinite scale of the celestial world, and the relatively minuscule speck of life each human holds in the universe. There are about eight billion people on Earth, but that is just a tiny fraction of the hundreds of billions of stars in the galaxies.
Humans’ smallness does not diminish individual potential. Making a wish upon a star is a romantic idea, but good leaders understand the power of pausing to focus, taking a moment to gather thoughts, practicing intention, pledging commitment, and looking far ahead towards the horizon of possibility. A wish upon a star might be the beginning of pursuing goals once perceived to be nearly impossible.
Catherine Renzi (Maryland)
Artist Bio: My oil paintings are a culmination of lifelong interests in art, architecture, and nature. I regularly participate in art exhibitions since 2018 Visually sharing the space between what my eye sees, my mind knows, and my heart remembers makes my artwork compelling. My colorful paintings are rich with invention and imagination.
I am a creative serial entrepreneur over several decades. Outside the painting studio I am an author, agricultural business consultant, landscape designer, and community volunteer.
I earned an A.B. in art/architecture from Smith College and a M.A. in history of art from the University of Pennsylvania
Description: This design embodies Aspen Leadership Seminars’ four principles: fortifying and undeceiving ourselves, intentional dialogue, leading forward, and humanistic leadership.
At the center, “LEADING FORWARD” appears in thin, italicized capital letters—literally leaning forward as if moving in action. The word is broken into four parts (LEAD / ING / FOR / WARD), a visual enunciation that embodies intentional dialogue.
The text is a single blue-green color, yet against a striped purple-and-yellow background, it seems to flicker from lime green to teal to blue. This perceptual shift, caused by simultaneous contrast, symbolizes the transformative power of perception: what seems unstable and complicated at first resolves into clarity with attention. In this way, it mirrors the transformative power of leadership, dialogue, and reflection to reveal possibilities and turn complexity into insight.
The act of carefully looking to perceive the true color mirrors humanistic leadership: empathy, presence, and care shared among individuals. The result is a bold but refined design that captures the essence of leading forward in a complex world.
Jada Schumacher (New York)
Artist Bio: Jada Schumacher is a Full Professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City and a Color and Trend Reporter for the Government of Japan. She is also Founding Director of designorange, a color and design consultancy for top twenty international luxury companies and forward-thinking brands. She lectures on color and design at venues such as Harvard University and the International Color Conference and in multiple countries from Argentina to South Korea to Italy. In client projects, bespoke corporate seminars, and speaking engagements, she shares her passion for the power of color to change lives.
Description: Leading forward involves guiding with presence and vision while staying aligned with mission and people. Leadership isn’t limited by position; it can engage from the front, the middle, or behind—like the coxswain in a sweep boat—steering, motivating, and ensuring the team’s safety and progress.
Conscious leadership broadens this perspective. It requires awareness of the mission, the needs, motivations, and dignity of those involved, and the wider societal and environmental impacts. Such leadership balances clarity with compassion and direction with service.
To lead forward is to accept uncertainty with calm adaptability. Change is constant, and leaders who exude steadiness and presence build confidence, reduce reactivity, foster trust, and empower others while guiding safely through chaotic waters.
People succeed when treated humanistically. They feel valued, heard, and empowered. Guiding them to take responsibility while providing support fosters growth for individuals and strength for the whole team. The accurate measure of leadership’s success lies in reaching goals and cultivating resilient, human-centered communities that move forward together.
Jimm Hughey (California)
Artist Bio: JIMM Hughey is a freelance and philosophical artist who bridges creativity, humor, and consciousness. Through painting, photography, and digital expression, he explores the beauty and emotion within human experience. For JIMM, art is both meditation and message, an invitation to see through the eyes of presence. His creations foster peace, connection, and joy, revealing that true art expresses love through color, form, and light.
About the Aspen Institute
The Aspen Institute is a global nonprofit organization committed to realizing a free, just, and equitable society. Founded in 1949, the Institute drives change through dialogue, leadership, and action to help solve the most important challenges facing the United States and the world.
The Aspen Institute has earned a reputation for gathering diverse, nonpartisan thought leaders, creatives, scholars and members of the public to address some of the world’s most complex problems through the melding of art, philosophy, and civil dialogue.
Today the Aspen Institute is an educational and policy studies organization based in Washington, DC with an Aspen, Colorado campus designed by Bauhaus-trained artist Herbert Bayer. Its mission is to foster leadership based on enduring values and to provide a nonpartisan venue for dealing with critical issues.
About the Aspen Leadership Seminars Department
The most difficult decisions leaders make are moral, not technical. Since 1950, Aspen Leadership Seminars have provided individuals and organizations what they need most: time, space, and a structured environment to become more self-aware, more self-correcting, and ultimately more effective leaders.
To foster leadership and build teams whose decisions are guided by humanistic values and grounded in purpose, the Aspen Leadership Seminars department offers residential leadership development seminars in Aspen, CO for individuals as well as bespoke custom leadership seminars for organizations.
Every Aspen Leadership Seminars challenge individuals to think more deeply, listen more attentively, and refine their ability to lead in an increasingly complex and conflicting world. Seminars participants engage in challenging conversations about enduring questions of ethical and effective leadership, gaining a greater capacity to lead with courage and conviction.
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