The Aspen Institute

On November 12, 2015, the Aspen Institute will host the 32nd Annual Awards Dinner at The Plaza Hotel in New York City. Cocktails will begin at 7:00pm and dinner will start at 7:45pm. The dinner is chaired by Mrs. Mercedes T. Bass.

General (Ret.) Stanley A. McChrystal, Co-Founder of the McChrystal Group, will be honored with the Henry Crown Leadership Award. Ambassador Samantha Power, US Permanent Representative to the United Nations and a member of President Obama’’s Cabinet, will be the Featured Speaker. Mr. David Brooks, New York Times columnist and author, will moderate a conversation between General McChrystal and Ambassador Power during the evening.

Registration for this event is now closed. For questions, please contact Emily Garber at 1-800-410-3463.

Featured Speaker –Ambassador Samantha Power

Ambassador Samantha Power is the US Permanent Representative to the United Nations and a member of President Obama’s Cabinet. At the United Nations, Ambassador Power works to advance US interests, promote and defend universal values, and address pressing global challenges to global peace, security, and prosperity.

Prior to serving as US Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Ambassador Power served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights on the National Security Staff at the White House. In this role she focused on issues including UN reform; LGBT and women’s rights; the promotion of religious freedom and the protection of religious minorities; human trafficking; and democracy and human rights.

Before joining the US government, Ambassador Power was the Anna Lindh Professor of the Practice of Global Leadership and Public Policy at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, teaching courses on US foreign policy, human rights, and UN reform. She was also the founding executive director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy.

Ambassador Power is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of ““A Problem from Hell”: America and the Age of Genocide” (2002) and “Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World” (2008), the basis for the award-winning HBO documentary, “Sergio.”  She is also the recent co-editor of “The Unquiet American: Richard Holbrooke in the World” (2011). Ambassador Power began her career as a journalist, reporting from places such as Bosnia, East Timor, Kosovo, Rwanda, Sudan, and Zimbabwe, and contributed regularly to The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic, the New York Review of Books, and The New Yorker magazine.

Ambassador Power immigrated to the United States from Ireland at the age of nine. She graduated from Lakeside High School in Atlanta, Georgia and received a B.A. from Yale University and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. She is married to Cass Sunstein, with whom she has two young children.

Henry Crown Leadership Awardee –  General (Ret.) Stanley A. McChrystal

A transformational leader with a remarkable record of achievement, General Stanley A. McChrystal was called “one of America’s greatest warriors” by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. A retired four-star general, he is the former commander of US and International Security Assistance Forces (ISAF) Afghanistan and the former commander of the premier military counter-terrorism force, Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). He is best known for developing and implementing the current counter-insurgency strategy in Afghanistan, and for creating a comprehensive counter-terrorism organization that revolutionized the interagency operating culture.

The son of Major General McChrystal, GEN McChrystal graduated from West Point in 1976 and joined the infantry. He began his military career as a platoon commander in the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Over the course of his career, he held several leadership and staff positions in the Army Special Forces, Army Rangers, 82nd Airborne Division and the XVIII Army Airborne Corp and the Joint Staff. He is a graduate of the US Naval War College and he completed fellowships at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government in 1997 and at the Council on Foreign Relations in 2000.

After 9/11 until his retirement in 2010, General McChrystal spent more than seven years deployed to combat in a variety of leadership positions. In 2002, he was the chief of staff for military operations in Afghanistan. A year later, he was selected to deliver nationally televised Pentagon briefings about military operations in Iraq. From 2003 to 2008, McChrystal commanded JSOC where he led the US Military’s counter-terrorism efforts all over then world. From the summer of 2008 until June of 2009, General McChrystal was the Director of the Joint Staff. In June of 2009, the President of the United States and the Secretary General of NATO appointed General McChrystal to be the Commander of US Forces Afghanistan and NATO ISAF. His command included more than 150,000 troops from 45 allied countries. On August 1, 2010, General McChrystal retired from the US Army.

General McChrystal is a senior fellow at Yale University’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs where he teaches a course on Leadership in Operation. He sits on the board of the Yellow Ribbon Fund, Navistar International Corporation and JetBlue. He is also the Chairman of the Aspen Institute’s Franklin Project, dedicated to promoting national service initiatives among American youth.

General McChrystal co-founded the McChrystal Group in January of 2011 where he is currently a partner. McChrystal Group’s mission is to deliver innovative leadership solutions to American businesses to help them transform and succeed in challenging and dynamic environments.

General McChrystal resides in Alexandria, Virginia with his wife of 35 years, Annie.

Moderator – Mr. David Brooks

David Brooks became an Op-Ed columnist for The New York Times in September 2003. He is currently a commentator on “The PBS Newshour,” NPR’s “All Things Considered” and NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

He is the author of “Bobos In Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There” and “The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement.” In April of 2015 he came out with his fourth book, “The Road to Character,” which was a No. 1 New York Times bestseller.

Mr. Brooks also teaches at Yale University, and is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. 

On November 12th, the Aspen Institute will host the 32nd Annual Awards Dinner at The Plaza Hotel in New York City. Cocktails will begin at 7:00pm and dinner will start at 7:45pm. The dinner is chaired by Mrs. Mercedes T. Bass. General (Ret.) Stanley A. McChrystal, Co-Founder of the McChrystal Group, will be honored with the Henry Crown Leadership Award. Ambassador Samantha Power, US Permanent Representative to the United Nations and a member of President Obama’s Cabinet, will be the Featured Speaker.