Conversations with the Iranians who are shaping the world.
A speaker series and a campus hub, started by Stanford students. Founders, scientists, artists and public leaders sit down with us for sixty candid minutes. Then we have tea.
Ali Ghodsi
Co-founder and CEO, Databricks
Winter 2027 · Stanford campus
Date and venue to be announced
- One conversation a quarter
- Sixty minutes, then tea
- Students first, everyone welcome
- Organized by PSA, since 2026
A conversation, not a lecture.
We ask the questions a student would ask if they had the nerve, and we leave real time for the ones you bring.
Forty minutes of conversation
A moderator from the task force and one graduate student. Our questions go to the guest a week ahead. No slides, no product pitch, no politics.
Twenty minutes of your questions
Hands go up. The person who asks the best question of the night gets the seat next to the guest at the tea table.
Tea and shirini, always
Saffron tea, pastries, and an hour where you can actually talk to the guest and to each other. That hour is the reason the series exists.
Influence takes more than one form.
Every guest has one thing in common: a story a student can use on Monday morning.
- Build
Founders and investors
The people who started companies from a dorm room, a garage or a second country, and the ones who backed them.
- Discover
Scientists and engineers
Researchers and builders whose work most of us use every day without knowing an Iranian made it.
- Make
Artists, writers and filmmakers
The voices that carry Iranian culture into rooms it has never been in before.
- Serve
Physicians, public servants and athletes
Careers of service and discipline, and the honest stories of how they were built.
One door for every Iranian at Stanford.
The series is the headline. The point is the community around it: undergraduates, graduate students, postdocs, faculty, staff, alumni, and the Bay Area families who show up with pastries.
Undergraduates
Join PSA, come to Nowruz and Yalda, find upper-year mentors, and meet the guest before everyone else does.
Join PSAGraduate students and postdocs
You arrived mid-career and sometimes mid-life. These conversations, and the tea after, were designed with you in mind.
Ways inFaculty and staff
Co-host a conversation, suggest a guest from your field, or open your lab to students after a talk.
Partner with usAlumni and the Bay Area
Come back to campus for an evening. Nominate someone we should meet. Bring your family to the tea.
Nominate a guest
Who should we bring to campus next?
Tell us who, and why a room of students should hear them. A warm introduction helps, but it is not required.
Be the first to hear the date.
One email when a conversation is announced, one reminder the week of. Nothing else.