Ivy Council

The Ivy Leadership Summit (ILS) is an annual two-day conference hosted by the Ivy Council to bring together students from the eight Ivy League universities along with leaders from the business, government, academic, and humanitarian sectors. The conference is usually held in February and its location is rotated each year through the campuses of the Ivy League.

The Ivy Leadership Summit was originally created to promote the exchange of ideas between students of the Ivy League and today’s leaders on subjects of public policy such as globalization, health care, and ethics. The first Summit was held at Yale University in 2000 on the topic of “Integrity and Ethics.” 80 participants were selected from a pool of applicants throughout the Ivy League. The main activities of the conference were keynote speakers, panels, and roundtable discussions. Since then, the Ivy Council has held six conferences each focusing on a differing policy topic. Past speakers have included Steve Forbes, Chairman and CEO of Forbes magazine; Nasreen Berwari, Iraqi Minister of Municipalities and General Works; Jeffrey Sachs, special adviser to the UN’s Millennium Development; Theodore Roosevelt IV, Managing Director at Lehman Brothers and prominent environmentalist; and Dov Zakheim, US Undersecretary of Defense.

The list of past Summits is below according to year, topic, and school:

2007 - “The Future of Energy: Analyzing the Problem and Debating Solutions” at Columbia University
2006 - “Free Trade, Free Press, Free Society: Leadership in the Age of Globalization” at Columbia University
2005 - “Health, Economy, and the International Community” at Princeton University
2004 - “Responsibilities in a Globalized World” at Columbia University
2003 - “American Ethics in Science & Medicine, Politics & Law, Media, and Business” at the University of Pennsylvania
2001 - “Sharing the Torch: Leadership in the New Millennium” at Harvard University
2000 - “Integrity and Ethics” at Yale University