By Mayi Carles

 

From March 25-30, 2009 the third Central America Leadership Initiative (CALI) class self-named CAtaLIzadores, gathered at INCAE’s Francisco de Sola Campus in Managua, Nicaragua for The Aspen Seminar, Defining the “Good Society” – their third in the series of four leadership seminars the comprise the Fellowship. 

 

Guided by Aspen Institute senior moderator – Stace Lindsay along with moderators in training Harry Strachan and Sylvia Gereda – Fellows focused on the components that make up a “good society” and where prompted to consider those societal values they deem most important, and the trade-offs they are willing to make in seeking a good and just society. Classic and contemporary texts reflecting the breadth of human civilization form the starting points of the rich conversation in which the questions posed by the group were frequently as illuminating as the varied, timeless wisdom of the texts. Fellows read and engaged in animated dialogue on the writings of Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Hobbes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, William Graham Sumner, Friedrich Hayek, , Milton Friedman, John Locke, Karl Marx, Arthur M. Okun, Confucius, Niccolo Machiavelli, Martin Luther King Jr., among others. They also performed Antigone, the classic tale of leadership and hubris by Sofocles. 

 

Only 22 of the 24 Fellows that comprise the class attended the seminar, nonetheless, the group maintained a good balance, which provided an opportunity for Fellows to deepen the bonds of trust they began to develop during the first and second seminar. 

 

This group of CALI Fellows is having a measurable and positive impact in the countries and communities where they live. During this seminar Fellows reported their progress in their leadership commitments, confessing their plans to make changes in their professional and/or personal lives as a direct result of the CALI seminars, and disclosing the status of their leadership projects. 

 

CALI is a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network comprised of 600 Fellows from 26 countries, Fellows from all six Central American countries – Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama are represented in CALI. Fellows are already very successful entrepreneurial individuals from the business, non-profit/civil society and government sectors who are committed to civic involvement and values based leadership.