Willie Thompson

Willie Thompson didn’t initially see himself as a candidate for Stanford’s Knight-Hennessy Scholars (KHS) program, a community of students addressing complex challenges facing the world.

Despite graduating as valedictorian of Morehouse College and being named a Schwarzman Scholar – where he co-founded Common Room Conversations, a podcast where he interviewed program alumni about their hopes, successes, and failures – he just saw himself as an ordinary person with a healthy amount of curiosity about the world and people around him.

“I didn’t start my own nonprofit, or raise millions in venture capital funding,” said Thompson, who recently earned his MBA from Stanford and is currently enrolled in the GSE’s Policy, Organization and Leadership Studies (POLS) program. “I’m just a guy who likes to play drums and read books.”

Since coming to Stanford in 2022, Thompson has found his niche by pursuing his passions: community building, intercultural education, and storytelling. He practices the first two through engaging and working with his KHS cohort, and he explores storytelling as a co-host of the KHS podcast Imagine a World, talking to scholars about issues that matter to them and their approaches to creating solutions.

“I wanted to do Imagine a World because I always thought there was a disconnect between how the fellows were described in their bios and how they operated in everyday life,” he said. “The podcast is an effort for me to talk to people in a way that goes past the prestige and challenges the narratives that some might have about people in these communities.”

In the POLS program, Thompson hopes to learn how to drive change in education by connecting people across different sectors to tackle issues collaboratively.

“I want to be the kind of leader who doesn’t require a title to enact change,” Thompson said. “I think it’s about communicating your point of view and creating environments where others feel confident articulating theirs.”