Growing up in Topeka, Kansas, Megan Mellin learned at an early age that everyone’s voice should matter. “I strive to use my freedom of speech, thought, and action to shape a more congruent and integrous neighbor for the web of life around me,” she says. This thought process has shaped her entire life. Megan is an innovation educator and social entrepreneur who has created accelerators and systems change programs for Nasdaq, the White House, Google, the U.S. Department of Labor, and more. At Google, she built and scaled tech support teams across seven countries, and then went on to train innovators from around the world on the skills needed to excel in leadership. Megan has designed and taught courses for undergrads at Grinnell College and entrepreneurs at Stanford, with a mission to empower changemakers and organizations to work collaboratively with encouragement, community, and connection.
Through her experience, Megan learned how important it is for tech leaders to consider the role they want to play in the world, and decided she wanted to do more to make technology a force for good. She set her sights on Stanford, producing, managing, and co-facilitating a seven-week course for industry players in ethics, technology, and public policy, supported by the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, Stanford University School of Engineering, the McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society, and public policy and political science departments.
Megan has since found the course a permanent home, interviewed Sam Altman and Jacinda Ardern in front of more than 200 people, and sponsored over twelve salons outside the classroom to enable more candid conversations. She also co-leads a GSB Women’s Circle in Seattle every month, offering a space for alumni to come together to share about their lives, passions, and goals. “I leave all of our conversations dreaming bigger or armed with a specific book, philosophy, or mindset to deepen my capacity,” says Meredith Udvar-Hazy, MBA ’19.
