Judy Samuelson is an author and executive director of the Aspen Institute Business and Society Program, which she founded in 1998—with a plan to change how business schools prepare students for a new age in business.
Within three years, Enron had floundered on the failure of shareholder-first thinking, and Samuelson and her colleagues pivoted to engage hundreds of business executives and governance gurus in dialogue about public company priorities, shaping the provocative ideas captured in the Aspen Principles of Long-Term Value Creation (2007), and launching a ten year ten-year campaign to disrupt Milton Friedman’s narrative about corporate purpose. Other signature programs under Samuelson’s leadership include the Aspen Principles for Sensible and Effective Executive Pay, the First Mover Fellowship for change agents within business, and the Agenda for the Prepared Board (2023), which illuminates seven ideas designed to help directors refocus on what is needed now to create value for the future.
Samuelson previously worked in legislative affairs in California’s state capitol, banking in New York’s garment center, and as the director of impact investing for the Ford Foundation. She writes for Quartz@Work, is a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Fellow, and a director of the Financial Health Network. A native Californian, she lives in New York City with her husband.