For 20 years, a handpicked selection of the world’s most “innovative leaders” have convened for off-the record, invite-only conversation at Jackson Lake Lodge.
A selection of past guests posted to the website includes President Bill Clinton and former NASA astronaut Buzz Aldrin. Many other details of Renaissance Weekend are private. Very little social media – or news media – comes out of the five-day cultural retreat run by a nonpartisan nonprofit with the same name. A few attendees have blogged about being invited in awe-struck terms.
Each year in front of the same Teton view, reporters swarm some of the world’s most powerful regulators at the Economic Policy Symposium. Over the nation’s semiquincentennial, KHOL got some access to interviews – but not photographs – of the more under-the-radar, casual capital exchange.
For another retired NASA astronaut Barbara Morgan, the shores of Jackson Lake offered an auspicious backdrop to ponder the origins of America on the nation’s anniversary.
The U.S. is a place where “rugged individualism” meets the aspiration of “a perfect union,” she said. “We may never get there, but just the aspiration of doing that is so important.”
Formed 46 years ago as a way of bringing together people who impactful in various fields, Renaissance Weekend’s primary output is exchange.
Philip Lader, 80, a former U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom, and his wife, Linda LeSourd Lader, a Presbyterian minister, hosted 60 families at the first Renaissance Weekend in 1981.
They were people of “distinction and ambition,” he told KHOL. Over the 160 weekends since, they’ve continued to convene people who are “making an impact.” Some 25,000 people have attended over the years.
Grand Teton National Park offers the perfect backdrop as a repeat venue.
“The legacy of the Rockefeller family, the continued work of the citizens of this community, the extended community around the national parks is so evident and so important,” Lader said.
Every attendee is also a presenter in TED-style lectures. And all come willing to learn a topic with which they aren’t familiar.
This year at Jackson Lake Lodge, presentations oscillated from fusion energy to spirituality and the role of religion in public life. One session included a video call with a Ukrainian commander on the front lines of the war with Russia.
Despite their status as leaders and experts, the retreat’s attendees are encouraged to lean into their ignorance, as former Harvard president Lawrence Bacow pointed out.
“It’s all people who are interested in learning from others about things which they don’t know about,” he said.
That starts with some of the program’s youngest participants, just 4 and 5 years old, who learn from astronauts and other pioneers at Camp Renaissance.
A session on astrophysics showed them the science behind the nighttime spectacle that those with later bedtimes can witness most nights over Jackson Hole, Morgan said.
Though for another astronaut, Steve Smith, the young campers can be equally impressive as their adult counterparts.
“They are already Renaissance kids,” he said. “I mean these kids know languages, they know places, of course they’ve lived a life with great opportunity, but they are going to be the leaders in the decades ahead.”
As the 2026 FIFA World Cup played on TVs in the adjacent restaurant and tourists wandered along the shore of Jackson Lake, participants made new friends at wide circular tables. Oversized nametags offered only hometowns — not professional titles — as a conversation starter.
“It’s really important when you come to these things to not ever judge a book by its cover,” Smith said.
Lader, the founder, said he was leaving the weekend with questions about faith, diversity on college campuses and how to imbue artificial intelligence with human values. The value of Renaissance Weekend, he said, is to bridge “traditional divides in American society,” be those divisions of religion, politics, age, race or profession.
“And there’s no better place to do that than in the shadows, if you will, of the majestic Tetons,” he said.
