One conversation a quarter. Sixty minutes. Then tea.
Each quarter, Influential Iranians brings one guest to Stanford for a candid, moderated conversation with students, followed by an hour of tea where the real conversations happen.
Ali Ghodsi
Co-founder and CEO of Databricks
Ali Ghodsi leads Databricks, the San Francisco data and AI company he co-founded in 2013 with a group of UC Berkeley researchers. He has been its chief executive since 2016 and remains an adjunct professor at Berkeley. He grew up in Iran, left as a child, and built his career in Sweden and then California, which is exactly the kind of path we want students to hear about first-hand.
The conversation will cover the early years of Databricks, what he looks for when he hires and invests, and what he would tell a twenty-year-old Iranian at Stanford today. Students ask the second half.
- WhenWinter 2027Date to be announced
- WhereStanford campusVenue to be announced
- CostFreeRegistration opens with the date
The 2026–27 calendar
Three quarters, three conversations. Dates are published as soon as they are confirmed with the guest and with the University’s event office.
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Autumn 2026
The task force forms
Students from the Persian Student Association set the format, open nominations and send the first invitations.
In progress -
Winter 2027
Ali Ghodsi
Co-founder and CEO, Databricks. Our inaugural conversation.
Confirmed · date to be announced -
Spring 2027
To be announced
Invitations are out. The guest is announced the moment the date is set.
Invitations out
A typical evening
Weekday, early evening, a room that seats a hundred and fifty. Times shift a little by venue; the event page always has the exact schedule.
- Doors open, tea is pouredCome early, find your people, pick a good seat.
- The conversationForty minutes with a moderator from the task force and one graduate student. Questions were sent to the guest a week ahead.
- Your questionsTwenty minutes, hands up. Short questions get better answers.
- Tea and shiriniAn hour with the guest in the room. This is the part people remember.
- GoodnightWe clear the room together. Volunteers get the leftover pastries.
How we choose guests
The name of the series is a promise, so we take it seriously. A guest should have changed something real in their field, and have a story a student can actually use: a decision, a failure, a second attempt. We look across fields on purpose. A season with three founders is a worse season than one with a founder, a scientist and a filmmaker.
Three rules do not bend. The series is non-political, in the guest list and in the room. Guests do not pitch products or raise money from the stage. And the conversation is for students first: we hold most seats for them and release the rest to the wider community.
Nominations from students, faculty, alumni and the Bay Area community carry real weight, and a warm introduction is the single most useful thing you can give us. Nominate someone.
What to expect from us
We run a tight evening so that your hour on campus is spent with students, not logistics.
What we take care of
- Room, registration, parking and a point of contact from arrival to departure.
- A moderator who has done the reading, and the questions in writing a week ahead.
- A short, factual bio and photo approved by you before anything is published.
- A small thank-you: your name in Persian calligraphy, framed, and the first glass of tea.
What we ask
- Sixty minutes on campus, plus the tea afterwards if your schedule allows it.
- Candor. Students can tell the difference.
- No product pitches and no political statements from the stage, in either direction.
- Recording only with your written consent. If you agree, we publish a short clip, never the whole talk.
Scheduling and press questions: psa-admin@lists.stanford.edu.
The archive opens in Winter 2027.
After each conversation this page will hold a short clip when the guest has agreed to one, a photograph of the room, the moderator’s reading list, and the three best student questions of the night. Nothing is published without the guest’s sign-off.
“The series is a promise that the next generation of Iranians at Stanford will not have to guess what the path looks like. Someone will have told them.”
Hear the date first.
One email when a conversation is announced, one reminder the week of.