About the Highlands Forum

Purpose

The core purpose of the Highlands Forum is to facilitate educational programming and conversations aimed at fostering international cooperation and peacebuilding around the world's most critical challenges.

More specifically, the Highlands Forum is a global, informal, cross-disciplinary network of experts with a common interest in information, science, and technology and their relevance to global security, societal transformation, and areas of existential risk. Participants from industry, academia, the arts, government, and nonprofits - as well as professionals in a variety of fields - come together to share their knowledge and insights through small, multi-day meetings, focused virtual sessions, and online interactions. The Forum’s process of “strategic listening” seeks to provoke, stimulate, and transform by bringing ideas from the edge to the core through in-depth conversations among nonobvious partners. Its current focus is on areas of extreme fragility around the globe, with an emphasis on identifying innovative, collaborative, and replicable solution sets.

The Highlands Forum is not a formal policy group and thus does not issue consensus recommendations or engage in either lobbying or advocacy. Rather, it aims to educate and to build strategic relationships among participants that will effectively reframe their analytic thinking and increase their organizations’ impact.

Organizational Structure

Board of Directors

The Board of Directors consists of five individuals who collectively hold day-to-day governance responsibility for the organization, within the constraints of the Bylaws. The board is elected annually, to one-year terms, following the rules set in the Bylaws.

Co-Chairs

Michèle Ledgerwood, Robert Gehorsam, and Jerry Michalski jointly chair the Highlands Forum's portfolio of activities. They each bring different substantive expertise to the table and are engaged in facilitating global networks of experts in emerging areas of policy or technology. They also have deep experience in planning, executing, and directing high-level, multidisciplinary meetings for government, nonprofit, and business clients.

Active Participants

Active Participants are individuals in our network who are engaged in organizing current and future Highlands Forum meetings, as well as those who have participated in the most recent virtual or in-person sessions, and who contribute to furthering our educational mission in other ways (online or within their respective organizations). The Forum regularly welcomes new participants with insights around our current and forthcoming areas of focus.

Alumni

The Alumni consist of past Highlands Forum attendees in good standing, and retain access to the summaries and any recorded content of past and future meetings.

Public

The public has access to Highlands Forum reading lists, meeting highlights, and reference sources (coming soon!), and may contact us to engage with our Active Participants at any time.