Kirk O. Hanson

KIRK O. HANSON recently stepped down as the John Courtney Murray, SJ, University Professor of Social Ethics and executive director of the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University. He has been a leading figure in the field of business ethics and corporate social responsibility for almost fifty years. He earlier taught business ethics and business-government relations at the Stanford Graduate School of Business for twenty-three years, where he was the faculty director of the Stanford Sloan executive master’s program. An active corporate and nonprofit consultant, Hanson has consulted with more than one hundred corporations on the management of business ethics and business scandals. He has spoken widely before corporate, academic, government, and civic audiences on ethical decision-making, how organizations create ethical cultures, and corporate leadership and governance. He has written a regular column on workplace ethics for the SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS; served as the founding chair of the Santa Clara County Political Ethics Commission; and was the founding Honorary Chair of the Center for International Business Ethics, China’s first business ethics center. He was the founding president of the Business Enterprise Trust, a national awards program for exemplary behavior in business created by national leaders in business, the media, labor, government, and civil society. He has served on many nonprofit boards, including serving on the board of the Skoll Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship for the past twenty years. Hanson graduated from Stanford University and received his MBA from the Stanford Business School. He held research fellowships and appointments at the Yale Divinity School and the Harvard Business School. He has been awarded honorary doctorates from the University of Portland and Santa Clara University, and he was honored by the Aspen Institute Center for Business Education with a lifetime achievement award for contributions to business and society.