In May 2021, we hosted the inaugural Wheaton Social Impact Conference, a two-day virtual event that brought together students, professionals and local community members to examine the role of organizations in creating social good. The conference brought together many of the elements that help Wheaton students to develop real-world entrepreneurial skills that they can use to strengthen their commitment to social change and to make the world a better place, and exposed students and others in the Wheaton community to change-makers creating social impact. One of the participants was Wheaton’s first Alumni Social Impact Award winner: Indira Henard ’03, executive director of DC Rape Crisis Center and a member of Wheaton’s Board of Trustees.

The Social Entrepreneurship Club at Wheaton is a group of students that work on entrepreneurial activities with a social impact. A new executive board for the club was elected during the 2020-21 academic year. Club members were among the lead organizers for the 2021 Wheaton Social Impact Conference, and are involved in organizing other events and social gatherings on campus.

There is a robust Guest Speaker Program for the social entrepreneurship and innovation, and many of these events are undertaken in collaboration with other academic departments on campus. Speakers on-campus have included Chimka Munkbahayar, a social entrepreneur from Mongolia, Dr. Sabri Bromage of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Heath, and LTC Nathaniel Davis, Director of Defense and Strategic Studies and the United States Military Academy at West Point. In Spring 2021 we held a virtual event with Ambassador John Campbell, the Ralph Bunche senior fellow for Africa policy studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), who discussed the political and business environment in Nigeria.

The International Lunch Discussion series, started in Fall 2019, brings together students, faculty, and staff from around the campus to discuss issues of international interest on a regular basis throughout the semester, in partnership with the CFR. These events were held in-person, with lunch provided to attendees, prior to the pandemic, and continued virtually during the 2020-21 academic year.