Technology Leaders Initiative
Fifty years from now, what will people say this generation of technology leaders stood for? The current narrative is caught between techno-utopia and techno-dystopia. Both diminish human agency and the role of leadership. We need a third path: leading in a world transformed by powerful technologies, but not powerless against them.
Who We Are
In 2026, the Technology Leaders Initiative will launch with a cohort of 20 senior leaders in and ascending to positions of significant power in the global technology landscape. Over two years, they will undergo a thought-provoking journey of personal exploration to reckon with power, responsibility, and what this transformation in frontier technology demands of leadership.
This is a generational opportunity for large constructive arguments about the future of society that transcend national, digital and party borders.
“A century ago, the revelations of quantum mechanics compelled leaders to radically reconsider reality, observation, and the nature of certainty itself. Today, AI alongside transformative advances in biotech, genetics, materials science, and energy heralds a similar existential pivot.
It forces us to confront the profound questions about human agency, truth, and the very fabric of society.”
Jen Zhu Scott, Co-Founder, Technology Leaders Initiative & CEO, Power Dynamics (China Fellowship Program)
Why Now?
The Unraveling of Institutional Authority
Universities, scientific institutions, financial systems, governance structures – the frameworks that have organized collective human understanding and action – are being disrupted at their foundations. We cannot preserve them as they are. The question is: what can we build from this moment of crisis?
Leadership at Civilizational Scale
Power over humanity’s technological future has concentrated in fewer hands than ever before. Yet there are vanishingly few spaces where these leaders can step back from execution to wrestle with first-principle questions about what they’re building and why. We must create that space.
Beyond National Competition
The global race for dominance eclipses the potential for genuine collaboration. This moment demands transcending geopolitical rivalry in favor of deep mutual respect among founders, scientists and policymakers across borders.
ANNOUNCEMENT
Defining a Good Digital Society
As AI becomes the foundation for most human capabilities, we face an urgent challenge: how do we define and evolve what a good digital society looks like? At the 2025 Resnick Aspen Action Forum, we explored what global collaboration looks like when Fellows move from dialogue to action as public ambassadors for humanistic technology leadership.
Ailish Campbell – Finance Leaders Fellow; Founder of the Technology Leaders Initiative
Professor Sir Nigel Shadbolt – Principal of Jesus College Oxford; Chairman of Open Data Institute
Jen Zhu Scott – China Fellow; Founder of the Technology Leaders Initiative
Chris Varelas – Co-Founder, Finance Leaders Fellowship and Technology Leaders Initiative
Spring Fu – Managing Director of the Academy at Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI)
The Program
PARTICIPATION
Becoming a Fellow
This is an invitation-only fellowship. Candidates must be nominated by a third party and selected through a rigorous process examining not just influence, but demonstrated capacity for intellectual humility and commitment to long-view leadership.
Fellows represent diverse nodes of influence across the global technology ecosystem: founders and CEOs, researchers and policymakers, investors and academics, artists and philosophers. What unites them is a willingness to engage in genuine inquiry rather than advocacy and to struggle publicly with questions that have no easy answers.
To nominate a Fellow or learn more, contact Managing Director Amy Benziger.
EXPERIENCE
Structure
This program is modeled after the highly successful Henry Crown Fellowship, launched by the Aspen Institute in 1997. Each class of 20-22 Technology Leaders Fellows is chosen from a wide pool of accomplished entrepreneurial leaders.
The two-year experience comprises a structured series of four seminars (approximately 25 days in total) held in different locations around the globe representing technology power centers, under the guidance of skilled senior moderators of the Aspen Institute.
COSTs
Financial Commitment
Fellows’ participation will be without cost to them or their organizations, with the exception of their travel costs and any incidental expenses incurred. Limited financial assistance may be provided for travel on a case by case basis.
Questions?
Contact the AGLN team.