Bozeman, MT — The COMMIT Foundation joined hundreds of leaders from around the world at the 2026 Resnick Aspen Action Forum, held July 21–24 in Aspen, Colorado, for four days focused on leadership, community, and the responsibility individuals have to create meaningful impact within the organizations and communities they serve.
Convened by the Aspen Global Leadership Network, the annual gathering brings together leaders representing different sectors, geographies, experiences, and perspectives. This year’s Forum centered on a timely question about the meaning of humanistic leadership and what leaders will be called upon to demonstrate in the years ahead.
Against a backdrop of significant technological, economic, geopolitical, and societal change, the conversations encouraged participants to consider not only how leaders respond to change, but how values, relationships, humility, and a sense of responsibility can influence the way they lead through it.
For The COMMIT Foundation, these questions closely align with our work and the experiences of the military community we serve.
Transitions and Transformations: Community at the Crossroads
As part of the Forum, COMMIT contributed to an Impact Session titled “Transitions and Transformation: Community at the Crossroads.”
The session created an opportunity for leaders with different experiences and perspectives to examine the complexities of significant life and leadership transitions together. The discussion centered on an idea fundamental to COMMIT’s work: not all transitions are transformations.
The session was led by:
- JC Glick, Liberty Fellow, CEO, COMMIT
- Nick Mumm, Site Leader, Amazon, COMMIT Fellow
- Lina Sinisterra, Aspen Colombia
- Naomi M. Slusser, Direct Reporting Portfolio Manager Submarines, Strategic Advisor to the Executive Director, COMMIT Fellow
Together, the group examined the Transformation Inflection Point, where a change in role or circumstance can prompt a deeper evolution in identity, purpose, and an individual’s understanding of what comes next.
Participants considered how leaders can remain grounded in their values and convictions while also demonstrating the humility to recognize that significant change may challenge long-held assumptions and introduce possibilities they had not previously considered.
An equally important part of the discussion centered on community: How do we establish meaningful connections during periods when our own sense of identity is evolving, and how can those relationships help us shape what comes next?
These questions are deeply familiar within the military community, but they extend well beyond it.
For service members, leaving the military can mean stepping away from an institution that has provided mission, structure, identity, community, and belonging. Navigating that change therefore requires more than identifying the next professional opportunity. It can require a deeper examination of identity, purpose, and how an individual wants to contribute in the next chapter.
Leaders across sectors encounter their own inflection points as well, moments when changes in career, responsibility, organization, or circumstance challenge established assumptions about who they are and how they lead.
That shared human experience created a natural connection between COMMIT’s work and the broader leadership conversations taking place throughout the Forum.
“Being a Liberty Fellow and part of the Aspen community for nearly a decade has fundamentally shaped how I understand leadership and provided many of the insights I now bring to COMMIT. I have learned that transformation rarely happens alone; it happens when people have a trusted community that challenges their assumptions, expands what they believe is possible, and supports them as they become something new. Humanistic leadership asks us to create those conditions for others—especially during periods of uncertainty—and to hold our own convictions with enough humility to be changed by the people around us. The responsibility we carry from Aspen is not simply to leave inspired, but to bring what we have learned back to our organizations and communities and put it into action in service of others.”
JC Glick, CEO, The COMMIT Foundation and Liberty Fellow
From Conversation to Impact
One of the most valuable aspects of bringing hundreds of leaders together is the opportunity to encounter perspectives outside of one’s everyday environment.
The experience can challenge assumptions, introduce new ways of thinking, strengthen relationships across sectors, and create connections that continue long after participants return home. The greater opportunity is what leaders choose to do with those experiences within their own organizations and communities.
COMMIT returned from Aspen with that same responsibility.
Our participation reinforced the importance of bringing the experiences and perspectives of the military community into broader conversations about leadership and transformation. It also provided an opportunity to learn alongside leaders confronting many of the same fundamental questions COMMIT Fellows navigate during transition: Who am I becoming? Where can I contribute? What community will surround me? And how can I use my experiences in service of something larger than myself?
These are not exclusively questions of military transition. They are leadership questions.
As The COMMIT Foundation continues its work with service members, veterans, and military spouses, we remain committed to creating the space and community necessary for individuals to navigate these moments with intention. We also recognize the responsibility to bring what we learn from those experiences into broader conversations about leadership, workforce, community, and continued contribution.
The lasting value of a gathering like the Resnick Aspen Action Forum is not simply the conversations that take place while leaders are together. It is how those conversations influence the way we lead, connect, and contribute when we return to the communities we serve.
About The COMMIT Foundation
The COMMIT Foundation supports service members, veterans, and military spouses as they navigate transition and pursue lives of purpose and meaning beyond military service. Through personalized coaching, immersive programming, and a lifelong community, COMMIT creates space for individuals to gain clarity around their identity, values, purpose, and next chapter.
