Judith Samuelson is a vice president at the Aspen Institute.  As founder and executive director of the Aspen Business and Society Program, she has been at the forefront of fresh thinking about the purpose and impact of business for two decades.  Samuelson and her colleagues deploy dialogue, leadership programs, business networks, and media—to build the courage and conviction of business executives to place long-term, public interests at the heart of business decisions.

The Business & Society Program’s pioneering efforts challenged business schools to broaden teaching about the purpose of corporations.  Signature programs include the Long Term Strategy Group and First Movers Fellowship for social “intrapreneurs.”  Dialogues led by Samuelson gave rise to the Aspen Principles to promote long-term value creation in public companies and The American Prosperity Project, a framework for policy changes that reward long-term investment.

Samuelson worked in legislative affairs in California, banking in New York’s garment center and ran the Ford Foundation’s office of Program-Related Investments.  She has a Master’s from the Yale School of Management and a B.A., Phi Beta Kappa, from UCLA.  Samuelson blogs for Quartz@Work and is a Director of the Center for Financial Services Innovation.  She was awarded a Bellagio Fellowship by the Rockefeller Foundation and values her association with All Souls-NYC, Star Island, and as an AFS exchange student in Sardegna.