Members' Conferences

The International Leadership Forum is a non-partisan, Internet-based think tank composed entirely of top leaders who meet annually in La Jolla, California, and in policy forums online throughout the year, to discuss the major issues facing our global society and to communicate the ideas and wisdom generated in these deliberations to policymakers and to the general public. The ILF is a natural next step for WBSI, evolving as it has from the Institute's pioneering work in the creation of online communities.

The ILF currently maintains a blog (Click here to view) that features weekly commentaries by a core group of Fellows of the International Leadership Forum-- former US Ambassador to NATO Harlan Cleveland, author/filmmaker Michael Crichton, anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson, psychoanalyst Douglass Carmichael, Biospherian Jane Poynter, survey researcher Daniel Yankelovich, former president of Planned Parenthood Gloria Feldt, actress and former Chairman of the National Endowment of the Arts Jane Alexander, Yale economist and political scientist Charles Lindblom, author Ralph Keyes, former FCC commissioner Nicholas Johnson, and other ILF Fellows and guest experts, plus highlights and policy reports from the ILF conferences.

For more comprehensive information on the ILF, please Click here for an audio/visual presentation.

Top leaders have always been too busy to give the time for extended residential gatherings designed to create intensive and prolonged deliberation on any matters, let alone major social issues. For that reason they have never before been mobilized to deal with the great contemporary problems that could undoubtedly benefit from their attention. The Internet now makes it possible for these leaders to engage in such deliberations at their convenience and in brief segments of time. Such is the power of the Internet and, consequently, the International Leadership Forum.

This unprecedented approach to the formation of a think tank by restricting it to top leaders has two advantages over other policy formation groups: First, the extraordinary pressures and responsibilities associated with those at the very top of their organizations or fields has in certain cases resulted in their developing extraordinary perspective and wisdom that sometimes surpasses that of specialists. Second, by combining their already considerable power, connections and influence, the policy analyses they produce can be delivered with special clout.

The ILF is a natural next step for WBSI, evolving as it has from the Institute's highly regarded School of Management and Strategic Studies (1981-1991), which launched the field of distance education. For more information link to ILF questions and answers. You may also view the current roster of ILF Fellows.