What Leadership Really Looks Like: Women’s History Month Edition
In honor of Women’s History Month, the Aspen Institute asked women Fellows from across its global programs one simple question: What has shaped the way you lead? Their answers — honest, personal, and deeply instructive — remind us that leadership is rarely what we imagine it to be. Here is what AGLN Fellows had to say.
For many of these women, the most formative leadership lessons came not from a classroom or a corner office, but from watching someone they admired do the work with quiet conviction.
Andy Kawa, Chairperson of the Kwanele Enough Foundation and Africa Leadership Initiative – South Africa Fellow, points to Dr. Mamphela Ramphele as her north star — a trailblazer who modeled how passion, humility, and resilience can break barriers and transform institutions. The lesson Andy carried forward: don’t fear unchartered paths. That spirit now drives her work challenging the deeply embedded structural norms of gender-based violence and femicide in South Africa, developing programs designed not just to change behavior, but to help institutions envision why change is in their own interest.
Gillian Zettler, Founder of The Drop In and Liberty Fellow, was shaped by the first female CEO she worked under — a woman who raised hundreds of thousands of dollars, championed the underserved, and hours before a grand opening, was still polishing handrails and cracking jokes with the team. The message was unmistakable: real leaders get in the trenches. When a family emergency pulled Gillian away from her own team at a critical moment, she discovered they had internalized that same lesson. She returned to find them running one of their most demanding strategic sessions like a well-oiled machine. “Trust the incredible people you put around you to do their best work,” she reflected. “Empower them to make strong decisions — and they will do just that.”
Some of the most powerful reflections came from moments when these leaders had to choose between what was easy and what was right.
Maria Pacheco, President of Wakami Global and Central America Leadership Initiative Fellow, faced that moment when her largest customer — responsible for 80% of her company’s revenue — proposed a marketing campaign that misrepresented the communities her organization served. Faced with the potential loss of nearly everything she had built, she turned them down. A fellow board member’s words stayed with her: “You can recover from bad sales, but not from losing your integrity.” The customer stayed and came around to Wakami’s terms. Her conclusion was simple and unshakeable: “Success, if not the right way, is not success.“
Isabel de Saint Malo de Alvarado, Trustee at the IFRS Foundation, Former Vice President of Panama, Central America Leadership Initiative Fellow, and Act III Laureate learned a harder version of that lesson during her time in public office — discovering that not everyone operates with the same values or transparency. Rather than becoming cynical, she emerged with a more nuanced approach: lead with good faith, but build in accountability. Inspired by Madeleine Albright’s principle of speaking truth to power while remaining grounded in service, Isabel carries forward the coviction that leadership is not about status — it’s about responsibility.Proof That Another Path Is Possible
Several Fellows pushed back on the idea that leadership is ever truly individual — pointing instead to the power of collective action, shared purpose, and the women who came before.
Lucia Barrientos, VP of Voces Vitales Honduras and Central America Leadership Initiative Fellow, learned early that what looks like competition is often an invitation to collaborate. When she launched her first social impact initiative and discovered two organizations were already addressing the same issue, she chose to partner together. That instinct eventually helped her reconnect the regional Voces Vitales chapters, leading to the adoption of a program that generates an estimated $16.65 in impact for every $1 invested. She credits a long line of service-oriented women in her family with instilling the belief that leadership is fundamentally about creating pathways for others to contribute.
Laetitia Deweer, Development Director at CEPIA and Central America Leadership Initiative Fellow, takes that idea even further. Working in psychotherapy with women and children, she has seen it proven time and again: when given the space to unite and share, people will naturally step into leadership. “Leadership is in essence taking care of others,” she reflects, “uniting others around a vision or strategy.” The women she works with every day are her greatest source of inspiration.
Maria Pacheco echoes this sentiment, pointing to the founding of Vital Voices Global Leadership as a defining example of women believing in women: Democrats and Republicans, Fortune companies and foundations, all united in supporting the dreams of women around the world. “This was the biggest gift,” she says, “women believing and supporting in women, and giving their precious time in the process.”
In times of uncertainty and rapid change, several Fellows returned to the same anchor: knowing who you are and what you stand for.
Sarah Haacke Byrd, CEO of Women Moving Millions and Civil Society Fellow, describes navigating a particularly turbulent period by returning again and again to her leadership “north star” — the core purpose and values that define her role and her organization’s place in the world. That practice, she writes, “not only steadied me as a leader but also ensured that every decision we made was strategic, transparent, and fully aligned with our shared values.” She leads an organization built on the shoulders of women bold enough to design the architecture for the world they want to live in — and holds that legacy close.
Tethey Martinez, CEO of Ficohsa Seguros Honduras and Central America Leadership Inititative Fellow, brought that same conviction to a recent decision to join the Board of Directors of Honduras’s leading private sector umbrella organization. It would have been easy to stay focused on her own company’s results. Instead, she said yes without hesitation — reminded that true impact belongs to those willing to step forward and help shape the future. For Tethey, leadership has never been confined to the walls of an organization. It extends to the broader ecosystem — advocating, engaging, and showing up where it matters.
Neha Kirpal, Co-founder of Amaha Health and the India Mental Health Alliance, offers perhaps the most quietly radical insight of all: that the most inspiring form of leadership is simply owning your whole self — regardless of context or consequences. In a world that so often asks women to shrink, that kind of wholeness is, as she puts it, “truly inspiring and faith affirming.”
Across continents and sectors, across very different industries and life experiences, these women arrive at the same place. Leadership, they tell us, is not a title or a position. It is a practice — of integrity, of trust, of showing up for others, of knowing your values and refusing to abandon them when the stakes are high.
This Women’s History Month, we are proud to celebrate these Fellows and the countless women who have shaped them. Their stories are not just inspiring, they are instructive. They remind us that the world gets better when women lead, and that leadership, at its best, is always in service of something larger than oneself.
About the Aspen Global Leadership Network
The Aspen Global Leadership Network (AGLN) is a dynamic, worldwide community of nearly 4,000 entrepreneurial leaders from over 60 countries. Spanning business, government, and the nonprofit sector, these leaders share a commitment to enlightened leadership and the drive to tackle the most pressing challenges of our times. Through transformative Fellowship programs and gatherings like the Resnick Aspen Action Forum, AGLN Fellows have the unique opportunity to connect, collaborate, and challenge each other to grow and commit to a lifelong journey of impact.
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