About Us

Launched in 2018 through a collaboration between the Peace Innovation Lab at Stanford University and the City of The Hague, PII sits at the intersection of behavior design, technology, innovation and business. We specialize in creating a culture of innovation and teaching collaboration across difference boundaries. Our goal is to catalyze a thriving peace technology industry by making peace profitable.

OUR MISSION

Establish a market signal for the value of peace.
Create new curriculum for ethical innovation and safe deployment of technologies that change human behavior.
Catalyze a Peace Tech sector and industry.

Featured

Margarita Quihuis, CEO

Named ‘One of The 100 Most Influential Latinos in Silicon Valley’ and recipient of the Maestro Award by Latino Leaders Magazine, CEO, Margarita Quihuis directs the organization's strategic vision and research on leveraging technology to facilitate peace innovation, game design thinking, persuasive technology. She has held critical advisory roles in citizen psy-op efforts such as the ‘Israel Loves Iran’ and ‘Romancing the Border’ social media campaigns.

She has also served as a consultant to the US State Department on Entrepreneurship and has been widely quoted in Asian Venture Capital Report, NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, US News & World Report, Forbes, CNN and CBS MarketWatch.

Mark Nelson, Director of Innovation

As the Director of Innovation, Mark Nelson focuses on generating, designing, and incentivizing resources for collective human behavior change, at scale. He advises businesses, universities, governments, and NGOs in these areas and aims to work with institutions interested in designing and implementing innovation platforms, AR games, and other applications to influence human behavior for good. He is also the founder of Epic Global Challenge and works closely with organizations in disaster relief operations and helps promote education in remote areas.

Career clients include the White House, Department of Labor, State Department, European Commission, Stanford University, BestBuy and Unilever.

Frederic Guarino, Climate Action Works

After 15+ years in tech innovation and marketing strategy, Frederic pivoted to academia in 2021 and is now a lecturer at the University of Sherbrooke, the Peace Innovation Institute in The Hague and the Peace Innovation Lab at Stanford. Frederic’s work is at the intersection of technology (AI), water geopolitics and the UN SDGs.

He co-organized the virtual (online) Green Action Zone during COP15, which took place in Montreal in December 2022.

Frederic is a journalist by training and has lived and worked in the US, France, Switzerland, Japan and Canada.

June Benjamin, Entrepreneur in Residence; Team lead PeaceBase

As a peace innovator and international attorney, June founded Peace IQ to upskill leaders and their teams to peacefully resolve conflict and build sustainable cooperation in a socially conscious workforce. Her experience as a former refugee from the Liberian Civil War and Baha'i refugee from Iran, inspired June to pursue a J.D and M.A. in Peace and Conflict Resolution from American University where she received the Dean's award for Professional Responsibility. She now combines her experience and network to innovate technology that helps clients turn the small daily decisions that add up to conflict to add up to peace. June will partner with the Peace Innovation Institute to foster relationships with thought leaders, industry experts, start-ups, and peace technologists to identify exciting new business opportunities in peace innovation.

Chris Bennett, Instruction and Research

Chris Bennett is the Game Designer in Residence at the Peace Innovation Lab at Stanford, and has over 20 years experience designing and developing games at Electronic Arts, Disney and other companies. He has lectured and created designs at Stanford, Bradley University, AARP, SocialxDesign, Design School X and other organizations.

Michael Lopez, Partnerships

Michael Lopez is the Business Director of the Peace Innovation Lab at Stanford, where he has worked with Coca-Cola, SALDEF and the White House Roundtable on Excellence in Education. Michael currently serves on the Stanford Business School Alumni Association Board of Directors and as President of Hispanic Net, a professional organization for Latino executives, entrepreneurs and thought leaders.

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