From July 23-26, the second class of Central America Leadership Initiative (CALI) Fellows, self-named "Calidos" (a play on words meaning both warm-blooded and CALI class II in Spanish), gathered at the Aspen Meadows for their second of four seminars – the Executive Seminar, in which they discussed their vision of “a good society” by reading, discussing and relating the writings of a wide range of thinkers to their present-day conditions.

As is the tradition, the Fellows also performed Sophocles’ Antigone. With only a few hours to rehearse in the course of the week, the Fellows put on one of the most creative and heartfelt performances the Aspen Institute has seen, complete with superb costumes and staging. Afterwards they discussed the key takeaways of the play, including the dangers of inflexible leadership and how the work reflects the challenges facing leaders in modern-day Central America.

CALI is a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network, now comprising 600 Fellows from 26 countries. CALI Fellows are drawn from Costa Rica, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama. All are successful entrepreneurial leaders from the worlds of business, government and non-profit organizations. And all are committed to both greater civic engagement and values-based leadership.

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