The first Founders' Circle Meeting was held on March 25, 2008, while celebrating 45 years of the spark that would later become INCAE. The meeting, hosted by Ambassador Arturo Cruz, took place at the Nicaraguan Embassy in Washington, D.C. During a formal and emotional act, President Condo acknowledged the participation of the three key leaders who had an instrumental role in the creation of INCAE:

• George Cabot Lodge, as a professor at Harvard Business School who led the mission to identify the feasibility of creating an institution like INCAE.

• John F. Kennedy, in the persons of his sister Ambassador Jean Kennedy Smith and his nephew Stephen Smith, who gave the order to USAID and requested the support of Harvard to found this institution.

• Francisco de Sola+, in the persons of his children Francisco R.R de Sola and Susana de Sola Funsten, as the great leader who stood behind the idea of INCAE and persuaded all the leaders in the region to form this valuable institution.

Participating at the reception were Harvard professors: Wickham Skinner, Charles Bartlett, Christophe Venghiattis, Enrique De Bayle, Harry Strachan, Jack Hastings, José Ramón de la Torre, among others. Also participating were regional leaders such as Carlos Pellas, Xavier Argüello Carazo, Nicolás Ardito Barletta and Francisco R.R Sola and special guests Alberto Moreno, IDB President, Kenneth Hoadley, President of Zamorano University, Ramon and Judith Morrison Daubon from the Interamerican Foundation, and several members of the State Department.