Visiting Leaders
The world's top industry leaders visit the Stanford GSB regularly, giving you real-world insight into critical management issues.
We invite industry leaders to share their knowledge with students through courses co-taught with faculty, lectures, and a variety of other forums.
Tap the Best Minds
Faculty members often invite leading practitioners to help students test ideas against real-world experience. In many cases, these guests teach jointly with the professor:
- Entrepreneurship: Formation of New Ventures is taught by Professor Charles Holloway and John Morgridge, chairman of Cisco Systems.
- Investment Management and Entrepreneurial Finance is taught by Professor Jack McDonald and each year includes guest lecturers such as investors Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger of Berkshire Hathaway, Andreas Halvorsen of Viking Global Investors, Richard Perry of Perry Capital Partners, George Roberts of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, and Tom Steyer of Farallon Capital Management.
- Leadership in the Entertainment Industry, developed by Professor Rod Kramer, is taught with Emmy-and Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker William Guttentag.
- Sports Business Management, created by Professor George Foster, was jointly taught by legendary San Francisco 49ers football coach Bill Walsh (until he passed away in 2007), and included guest speakers such as retired quarterback Steve Young.
- Strategy Making in the Information Technology Industry is taught by Professor Robert Burgelman and Andy Grove, former CEO and chairman of Intel.
Student-Sponsored Speakers
Our student-run View From The Top speaker series brings global business and social-sector leaders to campus to talk about leadership.
Recent speakers have included George P. Shultz, Former U.S. Secretary of State; Carlos Brito, MBA 1989, CEO of InBev; Stephen Ellis, MBA 1990, Worldwide Managing Director of Bain & Co.; Carlos Ghosn, CEO of Nissan and Renault; and David O'Reilly, Chairman of Chevron.
Be sure you really want honest answers, advises Jeffrey Bewkes, MBA 1977, President and CEO, Time Warner, Inc.
Fill Classrooms With Committed Teachers, says Wendy Kopp, Founder and CEO, Teach For America
John Doerr, Partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers addressing students during a recent View from the Top.
During his talk titled A Pitch for Deeper Green Thinking, Doerr said he doesn't believe the world's population will change its wasteful ways in time to stop global warming and urged Stanford MBA students to make this issue a priority.
"It was powerful to have Sports Business Management taught by both a leading academic expert, Professor Foster, and one of the world's most successful professional coaches, Bill Walsh.
The interplay of expertise, analytics and wisdom, passion and presence, was tremendous for anyone interested in leadership or in the business of sports."
Chinezi Chijioke, MBA 2005
South Africa
Associate, McKinsey & Company