Co-hosted by Yale Program on Stakeholder Innovation and Management and Yale Center Beijing

Event Time

June 19, 2025 | Thursday

Sign-in & Welcome Reception
18:00 - 19:00

Keynote, Dialogue & Q&A
19:00 - 20:00

Location

Yale Center Beijing 
36th Floor Tower B of IFC Building 8 Jianguomenwai Avenue Chaoyang District, Beijing (Yong'anli Subway Station, Exit C) 

Registration and Fees

Registration
Please click “HERE” to register.

Please send an email to yalecenterbeijing@yale.edu if there are any problems. 

Ticket: Free for Yale alumni; RMB 30 for regular admission. 

This event is designed for senior leaders, including CXOs from China’s top public/private firms (retail, banking, tech, real estate, etc.), partners (or principals) from VC/PE/consulting firms, academics and think tank experts, and senior government officials overseeing key agencies.

Walk-ins will not be accepted.

The language of the event will be English.

*Chinese subtitles will be provided during the event.

The Event

The Yale Program on Stakeholder Innovation and Management (Y-SIM) was founded in 2021 to explore a deceptively simple but operationally complex idea: that long term shareholder value is best achieved by creating value for all stakeholders - customers, employees, suppliers, communities, and others essential to a company's success.

On June 19, Ravi Dhar, George Rogers Clark Professor of Management and Marketing at Yale School of Management, and Jon Iwata, former IBM Chief Brand Officer and lecturer at Yale SOM, as founding team members of Y-SIM, will visit Yale Center Beijing to share key learnings from over 175 CEO conversations, in-depth case studies of companies such as Mars, Nike, Equinor, Rio Tinto, and Warby Parker, and ongoing collaborations with firms including Microsoft and Walmart. 

The session will also discuss how rising forces - including advances in AI and shifting geopolitical dynamics - are reshaping the stakeholder landscape, and how companies can adapt their strategies to stay aligned with long-term value creation in an increasingly complex environment. Renowned professors Zhiwu Chen and Ying Zhang will also join the conversation.

Speakers

Ravi Dhar
Co-Faculty Leader, Yale Program on Stakeholder Innovation and Management
George Rogers Clark Professor of Management and Marketing, Yale School of Management 

Professor Dhar has been involved in pioneering work in understanding the different factors that influence how consumers think and decide. He has also served as a consultant to dozens of Fortune 100 companies in a wide variety of industries, including CPG, health care, high tech, financial services, and luxury goods on developing best practices for generating and using customer insights. He is the Director of the Yale Center for Customer Insights, and serves as the lead faculty, with Jon Iwata, in designing Yale SOM’s first year capstone course, The Executive.

Jon Iwata
Practice Leader, Yale Program on Stakeholder Innovation and Management
Lecturer in the Practice of Management, Yale School of Management

Over a 35-year career at IBM, Jon Iwata held multiple leadership roles, including Senior Vice President, Chief Brand Officer, and leader of the company's global marketing, communications and corporate citizenship organization. Today, he is also an Executive Fellow at the Yale Center for Customer Insights, and co-inventor of a U.S. patent for a nanotechnology and process for atomic-scale semiconductors.

Discussants

Zhiwu Chen PhD'90
Chair & Cheng Yu-Tung Professor in Finance, Hong Kong University Business School

Zhiwu Chen is Chair and Cheng Yu-Tung Professor in Finance at the University of Hong Kong (HKU). He was a former Professor of Finance at Yale School of Management (1999-2017). His research covers finance theory, the sociology of finance, economic history, quantitative history, emerging markets, as well as China’s economy and capital markets. He received his PhD in financial economics from Yale University in 1990.

Ying Zhang 
Associate Dean & Professor of Marketing and Behavioral Science, Guanghua School of Management, Peking University

Ying Zhang is an Associate Dean and Professor of Marketing and Behavioral Science at the Guanghua School of Management. He received his PhD from the Booth School of Business at University of Chicago in 2007. Professor Zhang does research in market strategy, branding and customer relationship management. He currently teaches marketing strategy and consumer psychology courses at Guanghua.