PEOPLE & LINEAGE

The people behind Peace Innovation Lab

Peace Innovation Lab is led by a small active team and shaped by a wider network of behavior designers, technologists, social scientists, civic innovators, entrepreneurs, and peace practitioners.

We study how people engage — and how systems can be designed to make constructive, mutually beneficial engagement more likely.

OPERATING MODEL

How the Lab Works

Peace Innovation Lab operates as a compact applied research and design network. A small active team leads the work, drawing on Stanford intellectual lineage, field experiments, organizational partnerships, and collaborators across disciplines.

PIL works through projects: defining behavior, testing interventions, measuring engagement, and turning what is learned into reusable frameworks.

CURRENT LEADERSHIP

Active Team

  • Margarita Quihuis headshot

    Margarita Quihuis

    Executive Director

    Leads behavior design, innovation strategy, partnerships, executive education, and applied peace innovation programs.

  • Mark Nelson Headshot

    Mark Nelson

    Co-Founder & Director of Innovation

    Develops quantitative frameworks for positive engagement, Peace Data, and measurable behavior across difference boundaries.

  • Michael Lopez Headshot

    Michael Lopez

    Strategic Partnerships

    Builds strategic partnerships, organizational pathways, and applied opportunities for PIL frameworks and programs.

  • Chris Bennett

    Chris Bennett

    Engagement Architect

    Applies engagement architecture, engagement loops, and interaction design into designed behavior.

FOUNDING & INTELLECTUAL LINEAGE

From persuasive technology to peace innovation

Peace Innovation Lab emerged from Stanford’s persuasive technology and behavior design lineage. BJ Fogg first explored the application of persuasive technology to peace through Stanford coursework in 2006 and 2008. That work helped catalyze PeaceDot in 2009 and contributed to the formation of Stanford Peace Innovation Lab in 2010.

Timeline showing Peace Innovation Lab’s intellectual lineage from persuasive technology in 2006 to PeaceDot in 2009, Peace Innovation Lab in 2010, and the Peace Data Standard in 2018.

BJ Fogg

Founder, Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab / Behavior Design Lab

Intellectual lineage: persuasive technology, behavior design, and the study of how computing systems shape human beliefs and behaviors.

COLLABORATIVE NETWORK

Research & Practice Network

PIL’s work has always depended on interdisciplinary collaboration. Across projects, fellows, advisors, and partners have contributed expertise in behavior design, social psychology, civic innovation, governance, organizational transformation, peace engineering, finance, AI, and systems thinking.

SELECTED ADVISORS, FELLOWS & PARTNERS

  • Annie Gentes, Graduate School of Engineering Telecom ParisTech, Paris

  • Rosanna Guadagno, Associate Professor, Persuasive Information Systems, University of Oulu

  • Karen Guttieri, Army Cyber Institute

  • Paul Iske, Professor Individual and Organizational Learning at Maastricht University and Stellenbosch University

  • Saumitra Jha, Associate Professor of Political Economy, Stanford Graduate School of Business

  • Amy Robyn Krystosik, MPH, PhD, Post-Doctoral Scholar, Stanford School of Medicine

  • Michael R. Hanneken, Sr. Fellow, Peace Innovation Lab

  • Ryan Mayfield, Entrepreneur-in-Residence

  • Saurabh Mishra | Fellow, Peace Innovation Lab, Researcher AI Index Program Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence

  • Göte Nyman, Professor of Psychology, University of Helsinki, Finland

  • Timo Nyberg, Senior Research Fellow, Aalto University, Finland

  • Alex Soojung-Kim Pang | Associate Fellow at Oxford University's Saïd Business School

  • Piero Scaruffi | Cultural Historian

  • Lisa Schirch, Professor of the Practice of Peacebuilding and Technology, Starmann Chair in Peace Studies at University of Notre Dame, Research Fellow at Toda Peace Institute

  • Patrick Tague, Associate Teaching Professor at Carnegie Mellon University

  • Allen S. Weiner, Director, Stanford Program in International and Comparative Law; Co-Director, Stanford Center on International Conflict and Negotiation

  • Gabrielle Wong-Parod, Assistant Professor of Earth System Science and Center
    Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment, Stanford University