No Problem Is Immovable With the Right Ideas: Reflections from the 2026 Aspen Ideas Festival

By Erin Saul, Executive Director, GreenLight Fund Cincinnati

This month, I had the privilege of attending the 2026 Aspen Ideas Festival as an Aspen Institute Ascend Fellow. 

Over several days, I met nonprofit leaders, CEOs, philanthropists, public officials, and business executives working to share and scale promising ideas across sectors. I left with new relationships, connections that could help GreenLight advance our work, and a renewed belief in what becomes possible when diverse leaders have the time and space to listen and think about some of our community’s most wicked problems. What could a group choral session on rhythm, straight out of an Oakland classroom, teach me about the brain science of depression and anxiety? Turns out, A LOT. What’s special about the space the Aspen Institute creates at their Ideas Festival is the chance to learn alongside people who look at pressing topics like housing, mental health, wages, AI, and the economy through a completely different lens.

That sense of possibility felt deeply relevant to GreenLight. In Cincinnati and throughout our national network, we encounter complex challenges related to economic mobility, housing, education and youth well-being. We hear about how these challenges affect families through our Selection Advisory Council conversations and broader community engagement. My time at the Aspen Ideas Festival reinforced that these issues are interconnected, but also that they are not immovable. 

Proving That Complex Problems Are Solvable

One such seemingly immovable topic we hear about across many GreenLight cities is the housing crisis. During “The View from City Hall,” Denver Mayor Mike Johnston shared his city’s response to homelessness. Denver has reduced street homelessness by 63% and moved approximately 8,000 people into long-term housing through a mix of policy and affordable housing development initiatives.

“Our belief was this was a solvable problem,” he said. When asked whether the work could be sustained, he responded, “First we have to prove that it works so well that it deserves to stay.”

That statement could describe much of GreenLight’s approach both in Denver and beyond. We begin by listening to residents and local leaders, identifying a pressing need and finding an organization with evidence that its model can produce meaningful results. The most intimidating challenges can begin to look different when the right people are around the table, those most affected are part of defining the solution, and partners are willing to test a new approach.

New Connections Across Familiar Priorities

Other conversations brought fresh perspectives to problems I thought I already understood deeply.

In “The Rhythm of Belonging,” researchers and educators discussed how shared musical experiences can help the brain regulate emotions, strengthen resilience and foster trust, empathy and connection. I heard from Cava Lee Menzies, an Oakland music teacher and composer, who described seeing students enter her classroom in one emotional state and leave in another. Music offered them a way to express themselves, practice new skills, and learn the value of trying something difficult, even when they were not immediately good at it.  Then the ear surgeon on the panel, Charles Limb, chief of otology at UC San Francisco, shared what was happening in the brain. He explained that based on the MRIs he’s performed on people as they played music, what the kids in her classroom were experiencing was literally brain changing!

Discussions like these challenged me to think more expansively about the solutions I consider. Could increasing access to music help young people build resilience, confidence, problem-solving abilities and the interpersonal skills employers in the other panel say are increasingly difficult to find among today’s youth? Ideas that initially sound simple can carry extraordinary potential.

I saw a similar spirit in a session about Los Angeles County Skilled Trades Summers, an initiative supported by Harbor Freight Tools for Schools. Los Angeles faces a shortage of skilled workers at the same time that the region needs people to rebuild after fires, construct affordable housing, complete infrastructure projects and prepare for the 2028 Olympics. Yet fewer than one in five county high schools offer skilled-trades education.

The initiative brings the community and employers together to address both sides of that challenge. Young people are paid to receive hands-on training and earn credentials in fields such as construction, welding, automotive work and solar installation. This year, they will serve more than 820 students through 11 programs.

Once again, the message was not that the challenge is easily surmountable. It was that it becomes more solvable when partners align their resources around the needs and strengths of young people.

Conversations with Capital One about moving families beyond temporary financial stability toward lasting economic mobility, and with the Walton Family Foundation about helping young people remain resilient as artificial intelligence changes how they learn, connect, and create, reminded me that no organization or sector can address these issues alone. Local knowledge, nonprofit innovation, public leadership, philanthropy and business resources all have a role to play.

Turning Ideas into Action

We can look at persistent poverty and the systems reinforcing it and conclude that they are simply too entrenched to change. Or we can ask how we might continue amending those systems by introducing better ideas, listening to communities and creating new possibilities.

At GreenLight Cincinnati, every effective innovation we help bring to the city makes the path to economic stability a little wider for families. No single program will transform an entire system. But each can demonstrate a better way of addressing a locally identified need, influence how resources are used and help communities imagine what else is possible.

What I ultimately walked away with from my time at the Aspen Ideas Festival was a deep sense of awe about what a group of curious leaders can learn and accomplish together, simply by sharing a meal, a walk through the meadows, or in my case, an out-of-tune rendition of “Get By with a Little Help from My Friends.”