A number of Wheaton students and faculty, including President Hanno, participated in the 2020 Global Business School Network (GBSN) Beyond conference, which took place virtually in October and November. GBSN CEO Dan LeClair asked me to be a part of the pre-conference roundtable on entrepreneurship ecosystems, chaired by Stephanie Woerner of the MIT Sloan School of Management and Bala Vissa of INSEAD.  The report coming out of this roundtable, entitled "Entrepreneurship Ecosystems and Business Schools" mentions Wheaton several times, including our efforts to tie social innovation to Wheaton several times, focus on social justice, diversity, equity, and inclusion and the integration of social innovation with policy-related work and our maker spaces.  We hope to deepen our engagement with GBSN in 2021 and beyond.

Wheaton partnered with Ashoka U, one of the leading social innovation-focused organizations in the world, to offer a two-part webinar for educators and higher education leaders on “Leading for Relevance and Resilience in Higher Ed” in October 2020. These events, which included attendees and speakers at academic institutions across the United States and abroad, offered participants the opportunity to develop key mindsets and skills to embed changemaking across their respective campuses.  Provost Renée T. White presented opening remarks for the first webinar and President Dennis Hanno presented opening remarks for the second.  Over thirty members of the Wheaton community attended the two webinars, including Board of Trustees Chair Janet Lebovitz ’72 and trustee emerita Deby Glidden ‘68.