Ehsan will deliver an engaging presentation on entrepreneurship through a social-impact lens, exploring how innovative ideas and sustainable business strategies can address pressing social challenges. He will share practical insights on identifying community needs, developing mission-driven solutions, and building ventures that generate both financial value and meaningful, long-term impact.

Ehsan Zaffar is a civil rights lawyer, educator, and social innovator serving as Chief Difference Engineer of The Difference Engine at Arizona State University, where he leads efforts to engineer practical solutions to inequality, including the Women’s Power & Influence Index, the nation’s most comprehensive measure of workplace fairness. A former child refugee, he spent a decade as Senior Advisor on Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and founded the Los Angeles Mobile Legal Aid Clinic, a mobile legal care model since replicated nationwide. He holds faculty positions at ASU’s School of Social Transformation and Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law and is the author of “Understanding Homeland Security” (Routledge, 2019). In 2026, Governor Gavin Newsom appointed him to the California Commission on the State of Hate; he also writes for U.S. News & World Report and CNN and hosts the UnfairNation podcast.