Stories

Advancing Jesuit Business Education Through Partnership and Shared Mission

This summer, a partnership among Santa Clara University’s Mission and Ministry, the Leavey School of Business, and the Sustainable Business Institute helped bring a strong SCU presence to one of the most important annual gatherings in Jesuit business education.

Approximately 150 faculty, administrators, Jesuits, and other partners from around the world gathered at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles from July 12–15 for the 31st Annual International Association of Jesuit Business Schools (IAJBS) World Forum and 2026 Colleagues in Jesuit Business Education (CJBE) Annual Meeting. Organized around the theme “Disruption as a Catalyst for the Common Good,” the conference invited participants to consider how business practice, leadership formation, scholarship, and Jesuit business education might respond to profound technological, social, economic, and environmental changes in ways that advance integral human development and human flourishing.

Mission and Ministry supported three Leavey School of Business faculty members—Deirdre Frontczak, Jennifer Merritt Faria, and Sarah Cabral—in attending the conference. Brian Thomas and Carol Kelly also represented Santa Clara with support from the Sustainable Business Institute. This collaboration made possible not simply conference attendance, but an opportunity for faculty to contribute to—and learn from—a global conversation about what it means to educate business leaders in the Jesuit tradition today.

Santa Clara Contributes to the Global Conversation

SCU faculty were active participants in the conference program.

Deirdre Frontczak, Sarah Cabral, and Harvard University’s Sophie Blumert presented “Curriculum for a Changing World: Assessing Character and Leadership Formation in Jesuit Business Education.” Their presentation was part of a session focused on leadership and formation for a changing world and explored a question central to Santa Clara’s educational mission: how we can understand and assess the formation of leaders characterized not only by professional competence, but also by conscience and compassion.

Jennifer Merritt Faria, together with environmental consultant Carleigh Osen, presented “Corporate Social Responsibility for Integral Ecology: A Pedagogical Approach” as part of the conference’s Integral Ecology Special Track. Their work received special recognition at the conference when Faria and Osen were awarded the Henri de Laulanié, SJ Prize in the Integral Ecology Special Track for Practice and Teaching. The award recognized their contribution to bringing the principles of integral ecology into business education and was presented through a collaboration involving Loyola Marymount University’s Institute for Business Ethics and Sustainability and the Laudato Si’ Research Institute/Integral Ecology Research Network at the University of Oxford.

The recognition was an especially meaningful example of how scholarship and teaching at Santa Clara can contribute to conversations taking place across the worldwide Jesuit network.

SCU also had a leadership role in shaping the gathering itself. Sarah Cabral currently serves as President of the Colleagues in Jesuit Business Education (CJBE), an organization dedicated to supporting faculty and advancing Jesuit identity and mission within business education. In that role, she welcomed conference participants and joined IAJBS President Roberto Galang and Loyola Marymount University’s Jeff Thies for a plenary dialogue with Cardinal Peter Turkson.

Business as a Vocation

Cardinal Turkson’s presence offered one of the most memorable dimensions of the gathering. He presided over the conference’s opening Mass and delivered the keynote address the following morning, reflecting on business as a vocation and the formation of leaders for the common good.

His remarks provided a powerful starting point for the conference. Rather than understanding business education simply as preparation for professional advancement, participants were invited to consider business leadership as a form of service carrying responsibilities to workers, communities, society, and creation.

That perspective resonated throughout the conference. Sessions addressed topics including artificial intelligence and human dignity, finance and the common good, corporate accountability, vocation, sustainability, integral ecology, and Ignatian pedagogy. Participants also spent significant time engaging with the newly updated Inspirational Paradigm for Jesuit Business Education 2.0, considering how its vision might inform curriculum, faculty development, student formation, scholarship, and institutional priorities.

The program itself reflected the distinctly Jesuit character of the gathering. Academic sessions were interwoven with Mass, an Examen walk, opportunities for reflection, shared meals, and conversation. These experiences created space not only to exchange ideas but also to develop relationships with colleagues from Jesuit institutions across the United States and around the world.

Partnership as Mission

For the Santa Clara participants, perhaps the most important outcome of the conference was precisely this combination of intellectual exchange, formation, and community.

Jesuit higher education depends upon faculty who understand themselves as partners in mission and who have opportunities to explore how that mission informs their own disciplines, teaching, research, and professional lives. Conferences such as the IAJBS World Forum and CJBE Annual Meeting provide an important setting for that formation because they connect faculty members with a much larger community asking similar questions: What distinguishes education at a Jesuit university? How should our values shape the way we teach business? What responsibilities do businesses have to the human family and our common home? And how do we prepare students to exercise leadership amid uncertainty and disruption?

The support provided by Mission and Ministry and the Sustainable Business Institute made it possible for Santa Clara faculty to participate meaningfully in those conversations and to bring new ideas, relationships, and resources back to campus.

The conference theme suggested that periods of disruption need not lead only to anxiety or fragmentation. They can also create opportunities to reconsider what matters most and to imagine institutions and practices more deeply oriented toward the common good.

That is work Santa Clara cannot—and need not—undertake alone. Through partnerships across our own campus and through engagement with the worldwide network of Jesuit universities, we participate in a shared educational mission that extends far beyond Silicon Valley.