[2] Named for Knight and John Hennessy, Stanford’s 10th president,[3] the program was founded to prepare graduate students to address global issues like climate change and poverty.

[1] Scholars receive full funding to pursue any graduate degree at Stanford and participate in additional opportunities for leadership training, mentorship, and experiential learning across multiple disciplines.

The program's Global Impact Fund also offers one-time grants of up to $100,000 to scholars who have demonstrated a compelling commitment to the greater good by launching a nonprofit designed to improve lives and drive meaningful change.

McMurtry lecturers have included philanthropist Melinda Gates, journalist and historian Isabel Wilkerson, economist Raj Chetty, Nobel Prize winning chemist Frances Arnold, former U.S. Secretary of State, Treasury, and Labor George Schultz, astronaut and engineer Ellen Ochoa, Supreme Court of California Justice Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, speculative fiction novelist Neal Stephenson, and other prominent leaders from a wide range of disciplines.

[10] The New York architectural firm Ennead designed the two-story building, which has classrooms, a dining area, meeting and lecture rooms, as well as office space for a fellow-in-residence and for the program's administrative staff.