Impact Journeys

Not necessarily. In fact, we encourage you to learn about successful models, if and where they exist, including models already launched within the Aspen Global Leadership Network and not necessarily in your community or country. That said, we believe that Fellows are uniquely gifted, creative individuals who have the potential to come up with breakthrough ideas by virtue of their entrepreneurial and innovation-driven natures.

Leveraging others is fine. The key is that you integrate your unique gifts and your passion to solving the specific challenge that concerns you. The China Fellowship Program, along with other Fellowships, is modeled after the Henry Crown Fellowship program itself with contextualization…which is why we can now speak of the Aspen Global Leadership Network. In fact, we encourage you to look at other Impact Journeys across the network for ideas as you develop your initial concepts and plans. The seminars are designed to guide you through this journey. 

Yes. It can be for-profit or nonprofit. We don’t have a preference as to legal status. In fact, successful Impact Journeys are generally those with a sustainable business model. The key is that it has an explicit and positive social impact on Chinese society.

Your nominators believe, as do we, that you have the capacity to bring significant new ideas and energy to societal challenges that often seem to be hopelessly deadlocked. Everyone is walking their unique Impact Journey in this world. We have no specific target level of impact in mind but we do hope for a real and significant “return” to the world for this investment. We chose you because we believe in your ability to do great things.

The challenges we face in our organizations and communities are real and growing. They cannot be addressed by a “business as usual” approach. Stretching means tackling a new problem, exposing yourself to a community you wouldn’t ordinarily engage with or taking on additional responsibilities that, but for the Fellowship, you wouldn’t otherwise.

We know you are busy, and we know you are already engaged. We want you to stretch for two reasons: the world needs you to; and we believe you will surprise yourself by how much more you can actually do if you think about how best to leverage your time and talents.

Many Fellows are already “social entrepreneurs”, NGO leaders. We know that. In these cases, we want to challenge you to think about how you might step back and see with a fresh perspective how you might augment your leadership in the area you are concerned about.

Are there other approaches you have wanted to try? An experiment you’d like to test?

Use this as an opportunity to creatively engage in a different approach to the challenge you are addressing, or as an opportunity to do something that you would not have started or done, but for the fact you are in this Fellowship.

For instance, Jacqueline Novogratz of Acumen Fund created an “Acumen Fellows” program loosely modeled on the Henry Crown Fellowship Program. Bill Bynum of the Enterprise Corporation of the Delta created the HOPE Credit Union. Deema Bibi in Jordan added a new component of mentorship and values based dialogue to her work with Injaz.

Yes, a few. First and foremost is the correlation between the Fellows’ passion for the Impact Journey and its success. If you aren’t thrilled about what you are doing, odds are it will not succeed.

Other common traits of successful Impact Journeys:

• They were able to overcome uncertainty. In other words, they got started. Fellows were able to commit to a specific initiative and overcome their fears. They moved from a cautious “someone should” to an “I will” even in spite of their uncertainty. 
• They were grounded in reality. They did their homework. They developed a deep understanding of the challenge they were facing and a genuine empathy for those they were trying to help. 
• They were thoughtful in their design. They invested time and energy in understanding how to design their work in a way that would be more likely to succeed where others have failed. 
• The stakes were personally meaningful for them. They felt a deep level of personal commitment to their project- so deep that walking away was simply not an option. We saw this in three primary areas: 1) Relationships. Fellows who had close personal relationships with people affected by illness, disease or special needs of some sort. 2) Capital. Fellows who felt so strongly that they committed significant capital to launch their project. 3) Reputation. Fellows who put their reputations on the line by launching projects with a high degree of visibility. They aligned their passion, purpose and resources. They identified a clear personal passion and a deeper sense of purpose about why their undertaking mattered. And equally important, they were able to align the resources they had or had access to (skills, relationships, capital, company resources) to focus on the challenge or opportunity they saw. 
• They created leverage for themselves. They realized they could not do it alone. They found a partner, built a team or leveraged a business or professional platform to give scale to their limited time and resources. 
• They were resilient. They adjusted their plans, rethought their strategy, were persistent in looking for the needed resources, and were patient as the pieces came together.

If in addition to a personal leadership Impact Journey, yes; instead of, no. We encourage class-wide collaboration and have seen many attempts over the years to launch class Impact Journeys. None have panned out though, usually because of the difficulty of finding one that everyone can be equally passionate about.

We strongly encourage collaboration among Fellows, particularly when their Impact Journeys align around shared themes or challenges. At the same time, our experience across many Fellowship cohorts has shown that joint leadership models can be difficult to sustain if individual roles and accountability are not clearly defined.

Impact Journeys are most effective when each Fellow’s involvement is grounded in their personal “sweet spot”—that is, a clear alignment between the area of focus and their unique talents, skills, and motivations. When multiple Fellows engage in a shared initiative, it is essential to be explicit about each person’s individual contribution and leadership responsibility.

To support meaningful collaboration, Fellows are expected to hold themselves accountable to their commitments by clearly articulating their ideas, defining milestones, and regularly sharing progress. This clarity helps ensure that collaboration strengthens ownership, impact, and sustainability.

Yes. As long as they are not in the same class as you and you can find a discrete piece of meaningful work that will be a stretch for you and one for which you can be accountable. If you can find a way to leverage your unique skills or assets to help another Impact Journey achieve greater impact or scale, we will be very supportive.

No. As leaders, we assume you are already involved in boards and assorted charitable works. Simply joining a new board as an Impact Journey is not a stretch, unless it demands the unique skills and experience you possess to achieve a greater societal impact.

If you were already Chairman when selected as a Fellow, no. If you step up as a result of the Fellowship experience, maybe. We will consider this on a case-by-case basis. The key is whether you are playing a key leadership role and truly applying your entrepreneurial energies to significantly remake or significantly energize an organization.

It depends. Building off a pre-existing platform is fine. The key is that you are directly involved in a leadership role in the activity in question and that you and the program are doing something different as a direct result of the Fellowship. Remember, your Impact Journey should be something you would be proud of as your legacy. If you are just doing more of what is already taking place or would have taken place whether or not you became a Fellow, it would not qualify as your leadership Impact Journey.

A successful Impact Journey will engage your leadership skills, energies and vision to address a challenge facing Chinese society that you believe will have a meaningful impact and help to advance your vision of “good society” by putting your values into action.

A successful Impact Journey will challenge and stretch you as a leader: it may challenge you to be creative or to engage in communities where you might have feared to engage before or it may force you to acquire new skills or resources to address the challenges you face.

There are no objective measures for success in these Impact Journeys, but yours should be something you are proud of and something you believe will have a lasting impact on Chinese society.

One that never even started. One where you are simply writing checks. One that was not additive to what you were already doing or planned to do. One where your leadership talents were not engaged. One where your leadership impact is simply not evident.

Ideally, yes – but it is not required. Impact Journeys are intended to reflect a lifelong commitment to action, and we recognize that identifying the right focus takes time. Meaningful alignment often emerges gradually through reflection during the seminars and deeper engagement with the challenge or issue that truly resonates with you.

By graduation, we expect Fellows to demonstrate significant progress in defining their Impact Journey, including a clearly articulated project scope, objectives, and a realistic plan for the future. This foundation will enable you to begin implementation with clarity and momentum after graduation.

The purpose of the China Fellowship Program is not simply cultivating contemplation but transformation and ultimately, contribution, through Fellows’ Impact Journeys. As Fellows develop more self-awareness, clearer alignment with personal values, and stronger purpose-driven leadership throughout seminars, they will be guided to uncover their “sweet spot” – following deep internal introspection on the three critical prompts: What drives me, My unique gifts and What the world needs now. 

This “sweet spot” pinpoints the Impact Journey that each Fellow is best positioned to take as it speaks to the societal problems that are dearest to them, with their “unique gifts” and “mission” that they become more clearly aware of throughout the Fellowship journey. As Fellows conclude their Promise of Leadership Seminar, they set out on a lifelong journey of positively influencing and improving the lives of individuals or groups in their institutions, communities, industries and sectors. 

Throughout the seminars, dedicated sessions will be designed to facilitate your ideation process, brainstorming sessions with your peers based on your affinity areas. Wherever necessary, we will connect you with alumni Fellows who are pursuing / have pursued similar areas to exchange and learn from each other.  During each gap in between seminars, the program leadership team will schedule check-in calls to help you clarify your Impact Journey scope. 

Once your Impact Journey has been running for two years we encourage you to apply for the John P. McNulty Prize, each year three Winners from across the Aspen Institute Fellowship community receive $100,000. Additionally, the McNulty Prize Catalyst Fund is available for promising, early stage ventures. Read more about Jack Hsu (Class 5)’s Venture, the first organization receiving the McNulty Prize Catalyst Fund in China. 

No, however you are welcome – and encouraged – to characterize your Impact Journey as “inspired by” the Fellowship program or Aspen Global Leadership Network in any communications or marketing materials.

Impact Journey concepts are initially vetted by program leadership. Throughout the seminars, there will be opportunities for you to present it to your classmates in small group and plenary sessions during the Aspen Seminars – for their comments and advice, and then again at the third seminar, Leading in a Global Context, to a broader contingent of Aspen Global Leadership Fellows. You will also be asked for regular written reports on your progress and to meet regularly phone or in person meetings with program leadership on your Impact Journey.