The Business, Government, and Society Initiative is evolving into the Stanford Leadership Institute, an interdisciplinary hub for research, teaching, and convenings that prepares leaders to navigate and shape the forces transforming business and society, and to make a positive impact in their organizations and the world.
We are convening changemakers from Stanford and beyond with practitioners, academics, policymakers, and others who share our ambition and sense of urgency.
Featured Events
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Upcoming Events
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Monday, March 09, 2026 – Tuesday, March 10, 2026
On Campus
The Stanford Conference on Environmental Entrepreneurship brings together researchers and practitioners focused on creating a sustainable world economy through social or commercial entrepreneurship.
Monday, March 23, 2026 – Tuesday, March 24, 2026
On Campus
The 2026 Climate & Environmental Justice Across Borders Conference forms part of the inaugural year of programming for the Stanford Center for Just Environmental Futures, a new interdisciplinary hub dedicated to advancing community-rooted approaches to climate and environmental justice.
Wednesday, April 15, 2026
8:00am – 6:30pm
On Campus
This event will convene thought leaders for constructive dialogue on the complex changes reshaping our world, from the technological to the geopolitical, economic to environmental. The Forum is designed to spark new thinking, surface timely questions, and help leaders bring these insights into their work.
Monday, May 04, 2026 – Tuesday, May 05, 2026
On Campus
Hear from scholars on returning land to local communities in this conference on revitalizing Indigenous land stewardship for environmental sustainability.
Friday, May 08, 2026
12:00am – 11:59pm
On Campus
This conference will bring together academics and practitioners to explore how novel data sources and AI tools can support environmental sustainability, organizational resilience, and social responsibility.
Thursday, May 14, 2026
12:00am – 11:59pm
On Campus
This Executive Forum brings together C-Suite executives from major employers across hospitality, logistics, retail, healthcare, and manufacturing to explore how AI can transform large-scale frontline labor systems.
Monday, May 18, 2026 – Tuesday, May 19, 2026
On Campus
A dynamic and interactive workshop where we discuss current puzzles and future directions for theory development and research on belief formation and change, and its application to large-scale societal challenges such as climate change.
Monday, June 01, 2026 – Tuesday, June 02, 2026
On Campus
This conference investigates the roles of civil society actors, such as nonprofits, activists, community organizations, and philanthropists, in sustainability.
Past Events
Event List Opensearch
Friday, October 14, 2022 – Saturday, October 15, 2022
On Campus
This conference showcased research at the intersection of politics and the environment because progress on environmental sustainability requires understanding politics. Passing laws that lower emissions, creating incentives for technological innovation, and striking alliances and treaties across countries all require political agreements. Through empirical and theoretical research, we sought to understand political institutions and political actors, and how issues of sustainability evolve within political systems.
Friday, November 11, 2022 – Saturday, November 12, 2022
On Campus
We explored the roles that corporations, financial markets, and innovations in finance might play in meeting sustainability challenges.
Friday, November 18, 2022 – Saturday, November 19, 2022
On Campus
The first Stanford Oceans conference discussed technologies that can transform management by governments and communities, engage business, and help catalyze sustainability and accountability at scale.
Wednesday, December 14, 2022 – Thursday, December 15, 2022
On Campus
We focused on the emerging practice of global corporations to disclose their current and/or intended future greenhouse gas emissions.
Saturday, January 07, 2023 – Sunday, January 08, 2023
On Campus
We highlighted the role of marketing in encouraging behavioral change to better align with sustainability goals.
Friday, January 20, 2023 – Saturday, January 21, 2023
On Campus
We featured research on organizations, and their role in bringing about a more sustainable future.
Monday, February 13, 2023 – Tuesday, February 14, 2023
On Campus
We celebrated Hau Lee’s seminal contributions to bringing the triple bottom line of profit, people, and the planet to the forefront of the operations management research agenda.
Friday, February 24, 2023 – Saturday, February 25, 2023
On Campus
We focused on the design and management of new climate-smart and climate-adaptive infrastructure systems and how to accelerate their adoption.
Wednesday, March 08, 2023
12:00am – 11:59pm
On Campus
In partnership with the Laudato Si Challenge, this conference created meaningful change in the real world — sustained, broad climate impact that would not have happened otherwise.
Friday, March 10, 2023 – Saturday, March 11, 2023
On Campus
We highlighted research on the topic of Sustainability Reporting and Control.
Friday, April 07, 2023 – Saturday, April 08, 2023
On Campus
We explored how environmental justice scholarship is needed to create just, ethical, and resilient solutions for sustainability for the world’s most challenging social-environmental problems.
Friday, April 14, 2023 – Saturday, April 15, 2023
On Campus
This conference brought together climate scientists and engineers from academia, government, and the private sector, as well as scholars who use climate science to inform policy and decision-making.
Friday, April 28, 2023 – Saturday, April 29, 2023
On Campus
This conference brought together leading academic scholars working on climate science.
Saturday, April 29, 2023 – Sunday, April 30, 2023
On Campus
This conference summarized the state-of-the-art in exploring Earth’s seafloor, examine the most promising future directions of these technologies, and highlight applications for understanding hazards and increasing sustainability.
Friday, May 19, 2023 – Saturday, May 20, 2023
On Campus
We designed this conference to facilitate dialogue, knowledge exchange, and collaboration to create a sustainable toolkit to cultivate positive habits for our future and a sense of shared prosperity.
Thursday, May 25, 2023 – Friday, May 26, 2023
On Campus
This conference investigated the roles of civil society actors, such as nonprofits, activists, community organizations, and philanthropists, in sustainability.
Friday, June 02, 2023 – Saturday, June 03, 2023
On Campus
We explored innovations that have the potential to significantly advance both groundwater science and the emerging field of adaptive groundwater management.
Monday, October 23, 2023 – Tuesday, October 24, 2023
On Campus
This conference focused on the politics and the economics of environmental problems and regulation.
Thursday, November 02, 2023
4:30pm – 6:00pm
On Campus
This event was co-hosted by Stanford Graduate School of Business and Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.
Monday, November 13, 2023 – Tuesday, November 14, 2023
On Campus
At this conference, we convened sessions to address carbon capture and storage challenges and solutions.
Thursday, November 16, 2023
12:00pm – 1:00pm
On Campus
This hybrid event was co-hosted by Stanford Graduate School of Business and the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy.
Wednesday, November 29, 2023
9:00am – 5:00pm
On Campus
The purpose of this conference is to identify promising ideas that support on-the-ground disruption and outstanding challenges for AI researchers seeking to advance the operational needs of businesses and organizations, to explain the state of the art, and to distinguish fantasy from reality. An important goal is to foster meaningful engagement between scholars and practitioners in AI for operations, such as customer service, marketing, sales, logistics, healthcare, workflows, and human resources, and operations for AI, such as risk assessment and governance for the ecosystem of software, hardware, and human-generated content.
Thursday, November 30, 2023 – Friday, December 01, 2023
On Campus
As society struggles to better align behavior with sustainability goals, there is an increased role for marketing to encourage behavioral change. This can be accomplished by influencing both public perceptions of sustainability and promoting the development and marketability of products and services that work toward social goals but reduce strong consumer preference tradeoffs that might come with some sustainability solutions.
Monday, December 11, 2023
12:00am – 11:59pm
On Campus
The Watershed Restoration Conference showcased cutting-edge research associated with watershed restoration, presented by some of the leading researchers on restoration in California, but with global relevance. The conference will aim to synthesize biological, geological, hydrological, and most importantly, Indigenous sciences on watershed restoration toward a socially and environmentally sustainable future.
