What is needed to create and lead successful start-ups and large companies? John Hennessy, Stanford President Emeritus, says that many of the most important characteristics of high performing organizations are independent from the underlying technology or the scale of the organization. Join fellow alumni and Professor Hennessy as we explore the ten pillars of leadership.
John L. Hennessy, Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, served as President of Stanford University from September 2000 until August 2016. In 2017, he initiated the Knight-Hennessy Scholars Program, the largest fully endowed graduate-level scholarship program in the world, and he currently serves as Director of the program.
His honors include the 2022 Charles Stark Draper Prize for Engineering (co-winner), the 2012 Medal of Honor of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the 2017 ACM Turing Award (jointly with David Patterson), the 2001 Eckert-Mauchly Award of the Association for Computing Machinery; the 2001 Seymour Cray Computer Engineering Award, and the 2004 NEC C&C Prize for lifetime achievement in computer science and engineering. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, The Royal Academy of Engineering, and the American Philosophical Society. Hennessy earned his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Villanova University and his master’s and doctoral degrees in computer science from Stony Brook University.