ThinkXChange 2024

Aspen ThinkXChange: The National Forum on 2Gen Approaches will convene more than 200 innovators from across the country for four days – October 15 – 18, 2024 – on the Aspen Meadows Campus. This will be Ascend at the Aspen Institute’s fifth signature ThinkXChange, gathering leaders in the two-generation (2Gen) field who are at the forefront of advancing breakthroughs and best practices to create better outcomes for children and the adults in their lives together.

Registration is required and has closed as we’ve reached capacity, but we will upload plenary session recordings.

Agenda & Sessions

The modern 2Gen field – and movement – is at an inflection point with a decade of innovations in research, practice, policy, and philanthropy. Our Ascend Network now reaches more than 15 million families, and at ThinkXChange 2024, we will dive into their front-edge solutions that are ready to be scaled. Areas of focus will range from community mental health career pathways for parents to partnerships that embed 2Gen in early childhood and postsecondary systems to new public-private partnership models serving families that are unhoused and more. Together, we’ll roll up our sleeves in plenary sessions, workshops, smaller roundtable exchanges, and networking opportunities to deepen our collective impact for family economic well-being.

Day 1

Tuesday, October 15

7:00 pm  - 8:15 pm MT

More than 20 Parent Advisors are joining us in Aspen to share their expertise on 2Gen approaches and outcomes. With a national election weeks away, how can we plan forward to not just center but also share power with families in the years ahead? Learn from four leaders whose 2Gen journeys offer important insights on how to conceptualize, implement, and capture results from serving children and the adults in their lives together.

Day 2

Wednesday, October 16

9:00 am  - 9:30 am MT

While our North Star is constant, how can we anticipate and prepare for turbulence and the tectonic plates that are shifting in our communities, across the country, and around the globe to advance our policy and systems change work ensuring all children and families thrive? With an eye to 2025 and beyond, Ascend at the Aspen Institute Founder Anne Mosle will share how we can adapt the process of “future-proofing”—which is a process for anticipating the future and developing methods to minimize the effects of shocks and stresses of future events. Future-proofing is now widely used across sectors and issues from medicine to industrial design to climate change.

9:30 am  - 10:30 am MT

Data-driven technologies present enormous challenges and opportunities for families with low incomes. How can these technologies, especially Artificial Intelligence, be harnessed for positive impact? This session features three of the country’s leading AI innovators exploring the good, the bad, and the great unknown of AI for leaders creating intergenerational economic well-being and the families they serve.

Day 3

Thursday, October 17

9:30 am  - 10:45 am MT

While our North Star is constant, how can we anticipate and prepare for turbulence and the tectonic plates that are shifting in our communities, across the country, and around the globe to advance our policy and systems change work to ensure all children and families thrive? In this session, Ascend at the Aspen Institute Founder Anne Mosle will dive deeper into the idea of “future-proofing” with four leaders who are on the forefront of transforming our systems to create a better future for all families. Together they will probe:

1. How can we future-proof the way we frame the narrative and communicate about creating better outcomes for all children and families?

2. How can we future-proof how we build the political will to implement effective policies?

3. How can we future-proof the design of community-public-private partnerships to spur new models of building wealth and well-being?

Day 4

Friday, October 18

10:10 am  - 10:30 am MT

Performance by Kane Smego and pop-up commitments from select partners