24 people. 3 days. 1st of 6.

Hi nerds,

I salute you from Panama City.

Last week, I joined the first cohort of “Lideremos Panamá” - CALI Foundation's local chapter of Aspen Institute.

I got in a room with 24 professionals for 3 days and dove deep into the personal, the professional, and the vulnerable sides of both.

Doctors, NGO leaders, business(wo)men, journalists, politicians, people from the city and every corner you can imagine.

Diversity was the foundation. Readings, the anchor. Empathy, the objective.

Here’s the top 15 insights I learned

1. The best decision is the one you make, not the one you avoid.

2. Give it yourself first before you ask for it.

3. Nothing is possible without people, nothing lasts without institutions.

4. Sometimes silence is more effective than words.

5. The earlier the uncomfortable conversations, the better.

6. When war lives in the mind, imagination is the best weapon. Peace can only be maintained with efforts as creative as the dangers that threaten it.

7. To achieve great change, you often have to build bridges in “hell”.

8. Like yoga, life is about finding our peace during intensity - knowing when to pause so you can keep going.

9. The person taking notes is the one writing the history.

10. Justice that's too slow is justice that’s non-existent.

11. Not all help helps.

12. We're all walking together on the path of finding ourselves.

13. Incredible people aren't born, they're built daily. To be, you have to do.

14. Post-WW2 EU reached peace thanks to a coal and steel trade deal. There’s always creative solutions to align incentives between polar opposites.

15. You become invincible when you turn every negative into a positive.

Throughout the seminar, the moderators forced us to speak from “I” rather than from the collective “we”. That changed everything.

People don’t want to know what you do, they want to know your journey getting there.

I was left with three burning questions that are as much personal as professional:

1. What are my non-negotiables?

2. What am I building towards?

3. Do those two ^ compound towards the impact I want to have?

The lessons meant for us will keep showing up until we learn them.

See you in cyberspace,

Jules 🤸🏻