SHINE Summit 2025: Purpose, Place, and People: Human Flourishing in the Evolving Work and Tech Landscape
September 24-26 2025 | Cambridge, MA
SHINE Summit 2025 will explore the profound interconnectedness of purpose, people, and place in shaping a better future of work. While these elements dynamically interact to create the potential for learning, growth, and transformation, the connections may become muted in the case of remote or hybrid work. And while new tech offers possibilities to enhance work, it can also overwhelm our attention and mute our sense of agency, connection, and trust.
The Summit is about connecting the dots, making the invisible visible across the value chain to better understand how people and planet can flourish.
Join us for this unique shared learning between academics, business, and policy-makers.
Registration is hosted by Abraham House Global, an organization who sponsored SHINE at Davos in 2025 and who is committed to bridging cultures, borders, and industries, to amplify, voice, commitment, and action to promote a civil and flourishing society for all.
Click this link to register: https://lu.ma/rqhamj9k
The SHINE Summit is the leading forum for visionary thinking, innovative research and practical solutions that advance organizational flourishing. Join us on campus for the most important interdisciplinary conversations on the role of business in advancing human well-being, featuring renowned scientists and pioneering leaders of industry.
Agenda – September 24-26, 2025
Wednesday, September 24
3:30 – 4:00 PM Registration
4:00 – 4:15 PM Welcome
Eileen McNeely Director, SHINE at Harvard
OPENING PANEL: GROUNDING HEALTH AND SUSTAINABILITY IN EVERYDAY LIVES AND PLACES
Climate change affects health—not just in the future, but right now. The past year has made this undeniably real: the physical, mental, social, and financial toll from the LA fires, the Kentucky, Georgia, North Carolina, Florida and Texas floods, and record-breaking summer heat waves. Businesses have a critical role in both protecting the environment and building workforce resilience against climate impacts. How do we protect vulnerable workers and their families as events unfold? How do we measure the health effects of our climate crisis? How do we address eco-anxiety in our workplaces? This discussion reframes sustainability beyond minimizing waste, water, and energy use—it puts human health at the center of our climate response.
4:15 – 6:00 PM Melissa Perry (Moderator)
Dean of the College of Public Health
George Mason University
Mary Rice
Director of the Center for Health, Climate and Global Environment
C-CHANGE, Harvard Chan School of Public Health
Associate Professor, Harvard Medical School
Nila Cainglit
Executive Director of Global Occupational Health
AMGEN – Los Angeles, CA
6:00 – 7:00 PM Welcome Cocktail Reception
Thursday, September 25
8:00 – 8:50 AM Continental Breakfast
8:50 – 9:00 AM Setting the Stage for the Day
THE GLOBAL FLOURISHING STUDY
The Global Flourishing Study is a longitudinal panel study following over 200,000 participants across 22 geographically and culturally diverse countries on all six populated continents. The first wave of data was released in February 2024, with the second wave following in April 2025. What insights can we draw from these findings?
9:00 – 9:30 AM Tyler VanderWeele
Professor of Epidemiology, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Director of Human Flourishing Program, Harvard University
9:30 – 9:45 AM Q & A Session
9:45 – 10:00 AM BREAK
CORPORATE PURPOSE BY DESIGN:
SHARED OWNERSHIP, BUSINESS FOR GOOD, MEASUREMENT OF IMPACT
How does company purpose manifest—and why does it matter? Purpose goes beyond a business’s products or services. It’s embedded in company structures, policies, and culture. Through a series of conversations, we explore how corporate purpose is defined, directed, implemented, and effective. These discussions cover employee ownership models, cultures that drive social impact and justice, measurement of the strength and impact of corporate purpose, volunteering as purpose, and purposefully incorporating nature into place.
10:00 – 11:30 AM Sparking Purpose with Employee Ownership
Ashley Whillans
Volpert Family Associate Professor of Business Administration
Harvard Business School
Graham Thomas
Principal, Capstone, KKR
Wendy Cambor – Moderator
Senior Managing Director · New Lane Group Inc
11:30 – 12:30 PM Business Purpose as Social Good
Angel Bonet
Founder and Chairman, Impactco
Mario Rovirosa Escosura
CEO, Ferrer
12:30 – 2:00 PM LUNCH
2:00 – 3:30 PM Strong Corporate Purpose, Volunteerism and Purpose, Nature in Place
Alvaro Lleo (Moderator) Associate Professor, School of Economics and Business, University of Navarra
Affiliate Research Scientist, SHINE, Human Flourishing Program, Harvard University
Maria Paula Florez Jimenez
Assistant Professor at School of Economics and Business, Universidad de Navarra| Affiliated Research Scientist, SHINE Harvard| Researcher at EICEA, Universidad de la Sabana
Dorota Weziak-Bialowolska
Professor in Social Sciences, Kominski University, Affiliate Research Faculty, SHINE, Human Flourishing Program, Harvard University
Linda Powers Tomasso
Nature and Health Research Associate, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
3:30 – 3:45 PM BREAK
HUMANIZING TECH ADOPTION
Generative AI presents an opportunity to achieve greater impact with fewer resources. The critical question isn’t whether this will affect jobs—it will—but how we shape that transformation. Can we chart a course that augments human potential while safeguarding dignity, purpose, and the values that define meaningful work?
3:45 – 4:30 PM Ron Ivy
CEO, Noēsis Collaborative
Research Fellow, Harvard Human Flourishing Program
CLOSING REMARKS
4:30 – 5:30PM Shop Floor Summary
Heloisa Jardim
Director, BTG Pactual
Harvard SHINE – Senior Research Advisor
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 26
8:00 – 8:30 AM Networking Breakfast
8:30 – 9: 00 AM Demonstration of Tech for Good in Global Supply Chains
WORKERS’ PRECARITY AND ITS CONSEQUENCES
A defining feature of contemporary employment is workers’ precarity. This is amplified by gig work and related employment structures, but increasingly precarity is a long-term historical trend across a wide range of work arrangements and social classes. How can we think about the relationship between precarity and workers’ fulfillment, engagement, autonomy, and control?
9:00 – 9:45 AM Rachel Meyer
Lecturer in Sociology of Work
Harvard University
9:45 – 10:00 AM BREAK
MAKING VISIBLE THE INVISIBLE IN GLOBAL SUPPLY CHAINS
Technology now enables us to view global supply chains as they truly are; complex, living systems
powered by human contribution. By bringing visibility to worker experiences and creating smarter
connections between needs and resources, we can simultaneously drive economic efficiency, build
resilience, advance sustainability, and improve lives across the entire value chain. What are the
challenges and opportunities for workers in global supply chains?
10:00 – 11:30 AM Emily Trant (Moderator)
Chief Impact Officer, Wagestream
Host of the Invisible Worker Podcast
D’vorah Graeser
Founder & CEO, RocketSmart, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
CTO, SOS Labs
Nikolet Zwart
Impact Lawyer, BioLegal, SOS Labs, Netherlands
A new platform to distribute resources to micro-farmers in Africa
Sanchita B. Saxena
Faculty Fellow, Institute for Research on Labor and Employment
University of California, Berkeley
Building More Equitable Supply Chains
Regina Skiba, PhD Candidate,Jagiellonian University, Factory Work
SHINE 10 YEARS LATER: LOOKING BACK AT THE FUTURE
SHINE, Harvard’s Sustainability and Health Initiative, was established a decade ago to unite academics, policymakers, and business leaders in exploring pathways to a better future. What have we learned looking back?
11:30 – 12:00 PM Conversation with the SHINE Founders
REDEFINING OUR PURPOSE FOR PEOPLE AND PLACE
Sustainable futures can be imagined as a path for learning, caring, and positive social connection embedded in people and places in our daily lives. What does that look like? How can we turn the corner from doom and gloom to growth and life fulfillment?
12:00 – 12:3O PM Greg Norris
Director SHINE at MIT, Research Scientist
12:30 – 1:00 PM——— Summary and Closing Remarks