Cornell Keynotes

The Cornell Certificate Program: Innovation Strategy 

Andrea's company Simplifed 

Leading successful innovation initiatives comes with a daunting set of challenges. You have to know how to navigate the tension between maintaining operational stability and fostering a culture of experimentation, all while managing stakeholder expectations, handling resource constraints, and making sure your innovation strategies are firmly aligned with organizational goals. That’s a lot.

There isn’t an app for that, but there is a playbook that includes proven strategies for driving innovation that you can learn and bring to your organization. If you can leverage your technical smarts with strong people skills, then you can keep teams excited, motivated, and emboldened to make smart decisions with sometimes incomplete information.

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Learn more about storytelling online at Cornell: The Media Strategy for Policy and PR Cornell Certificate Program 

Check out the Executive Master of Public Administration (EMPA) program at the Brooks School

Mark’s Newsletter “One for the Week”

In this Keynote, Mark Bayer, Visiting Lecturer at Cornell Brooks School of Public Policy and former U.S. Senate Chief of Staff, reveals insider strategies for crafting compelling, memorable stories that influence key stakeholders in your professional ecosystem. Drawing from 20 years of experience writing powerful narratives, persuasive speeches, and media pitches at the highest levels of U.S. government, Mark shares proven techniques you can use to elevate your own presentations and achieve high-priority goals.

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The Migration and Human Rights Program @Cornell Law School

The Immigration Law and Advocacy Clinic @Cornell Law School

Immigration was a top priority in 2025 for President Trump. The administration has restricted immigration in many ways, ranging from travel bans to mass deportations. The White House has stated that the United States may have negative net migration to the U.S. in 2025 for the first time in over 50 years. 

In the meantime, employers face labor shortages. The demographics of an aging population and declining birth rates are indisputable. More people worldwide are fleeing the breakdown of civil society, climate change, and persecution than ever before. Over 10 million people in the United States lack immigration status and fear deportation. And our immigration courts face a backlog of over 3 million deportation cases. 

Join retired Cornell Law professor Stephen Yale-Loehr and a panel of Cornell experts as they discuss how immigration law and policy changed in 2025 and what we might expect in 2026.

What You’ll Learn:

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Presidential Task Force on Institutional Voice Draft Report 

October 2025 Update 

Please provide feedback on the report 

Members of our community —  whether students, staff, faculty, or alumni — feel deeply about many local, national, and world events, but does that mean that a university should opine on such weighty matters? Or should the university sit back and allow the individual voices of the community rise to the surface? Can it do both? And when the university does speak, who speaks for the university? What principles should govern this decision of when and how often to speak? 

Last year, Cornell University created the Presidential Task Force on Institutional Voice to examine these questions and issue recommendations to the community. A draft report was released to the Cornell community during the fall semester outlining principles and providing suggestions to guide how the president, provost, deans, academic departments, and others should approach this issue. The Task Force was co-chaired by Cornell Law School Dean Jens David Ohlin and Deputy Provost Avery August.

In this Keynote, Dean Ohlin and the Professor Nelson Tebbe will discuss the Task Force’s findings.

What You’ll Learn:

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The AI in Finance certificate program starts April 13, 2026!

AI is reshaping finance, but it's not about replacing people — it's about empowering them to work more effectively. As these tools become part of our everyday roles in financial services, knowing how to successfully partner with AI while leveraging human judgment has become key to success.

Join Cornell Professor Victoria Averbukh and Andrew Chin, Chief AI Officer at AllianceBernstein, for a practical look at AI in finance. They'll explore how AI can enhance financial decision making and discuss why human expertise remains essential. Through real-world examples, they'll explain how professionals can confidently work with AI tools to achieve better outcomes as partners in the process.

What You'll Learn

• How to identify which financial tasks are best suited for AI assistance
• Tips for balancing AI capabilities with human insight
• Strategies for confidently integrating AI tools into your business processes

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BOOK: In Covid's Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us 

In In Covid's Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us, authors Frances Lee and Stephen Macedo examine the unprecedented mobilization of emergency powers during the COVID-19 pandemic, when nearly half the world's population was under quarantine by April 2020. Their eye-opening analysis questions how institutions responded to the crisis, why pre-existing pandemic plans were ignored, and how COVID-19 policies often benefited the "laptop class" while leaving essential workers exposed, revealing how scientific discourse became increasingly politicized as reasonable dissent was marginalized.

In this Keynote from Cornell's College of Arts & Sciences, Princeton Professor Frances Lee will speak about her best-selling book, offering a comprehensive — and candid — political assessment of how U.S. institutions fared during this historic global crisis. This timely discussion will explore the successes and failures of America's pandemic response and its implications for future crisis management.

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Change remains the only constant in hospitality, but today's accelerated pace brings unprecedented opportunities to innovate and differentiate your brand. Technology and AI are enabling streamlined operations and personalized guest experiences that drive loyalty and revenue.

Consumer behavior shifts like mindful drinking trends, for example, present deep challenges but can also open new revenue streams for savvy operators who know how to pivot. In this Keynote from Cornell’s Nolan School of Hotel Administration, we’ll explore successful adaptation strategies that can strengthen your business model and broaden your appeal.

Join industry leader Peter Karpinski from Pyramid Global Hospitality and Cornell Senior Lecturer and industry veteran Douglass Miller as they discuss how to survive and thrive in this rebounding market as well as what it takes to gain competitive advantage. They’ll also share storytelling techniques for reaching today's experience-hungry consumers.

Check out Doug’s Beer Essentials Cornell Certificate Program here

Pyramid Global Hospitality 

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Learn more about The 2030 Project: A Cornell Climate Initiative https://climate.cornell.edu/

Cornell College of Engineering https://www.engineering.cornell.edu/

Cornell College of Agriculture and Life Sciences https://cals.cornell.edu/

As concerns about climate change intensify, researchers are exploring the potential for large-scale human intervention in the Earth’s climate system – a set of strategies collectively known as geoengineering. Some of these strategies, called sunlight reflection methods, involve techniques like adding aerosols to the stratosphere to reflect a small portion of solar radiation back into space. Though still in the early stages of research, sunlight reflection and other geoengineering ideas raise complex scientific, ethical, and political questions.

In this Keynote, three experts from Cornell University delve into what geoengineering is and what it isn’t. Clarifying the science, the panel will separate fact from fiction and discuss why a cautious, transparent, and interdisciplinary approach is essential.

This conversation is part of The 2030 Project: A Cornell Climate Initiative, administered by the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability.

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Watch the video recording of this Keynote here on YouTube.

Check out JR Keller's Onboarding and Employee Success Cornell Course

Onboarding has a significant impact on the employee experience, with research showing it can boost new hire productivity by over 60% and decrease turnover likelihood by nearly 50%.

In this Cornell Keynote, JR Keller, Associate Professor of Human Resource Studies at Cornell ILR School, and Beth Flynn-Ferry, Executive Director of the Center for Advanced Human Resource Studies, share insights into how effective onboarding enhances job satisfaction, confidence, organizational commitment, and employee well-being.

Drawing on decades of academic research and real-world expertise, they will present four actionable tips to improve onboarding programs, equipping leaders to drive engagement, retention, and overall team success.

What You'll Learn

• The importance of preboarding and how to do it well
• The pivotal role the hiring manager — not HR — plays in onboarding
• The importance of assigning an onboarding buddy
• How to measure success

Effective Interviewing Cornell Course https://tinyurl.com/2brlxtfx

The Center for Advanced HR Studies (CAHRS) https://www.ilr.cornell.edu/cahrs

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Watch the video recording of this Keynote here on YouTube.

In the space of a single generation (1950 to 1980), the journalist and author William F. Buckley led a small band of little-known conservatives to the peaks of political power and cultural influence.

Ten years before his death, Buckley chose journalist and historian Sam Tanenhaus to tell the full story of his life, granting him extensive uncensored interviews and exclusive access to his most private papers. The result, “Buckley: The Life and the Revolution,” published in June 2025, has received a great deal of attention and prompted wide and intense debate.

In a live on-stage conversation at Cornell's College of Arts and Sciences, Peter Loewen, the Harold Tanner Dean of Arts and Sciences, and Tanenhaus discuss Buckley and the true meaning of his life and legacy in the Age of Donald Trump.

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