Alec Ross is one of America’s leading experts on innovation. He is currently a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Johns Hopkins University and the author of The Industries of the Future, published by Simon & Schuster. The Industries of the Future explores the technological and economic trends and developments that will shape the next ten years and provides the geopolitical, cultural, and generational contexts out of which they are emerging. Since its publication in February of 2016, it has gone into an 8th printing and the rights have been sold for translation into 18 languages.

Google Chairman Eric Schmidt writes that, “In a world growing more chaotic, Alec Ross is one of those very rare people who can see patterns in the chaos and provide guidance for the road forward. He has an unusual diversity of expertise that allows him to apply multiple lenses to the world’s challenges and dream up the kind of innovative solutions that are changing the world.”

Among recent recognitions:

• Top 100 Global Thinkers by Foreign Policy Magazine
• U.S. Department of State Distinguished Honor Award
• Oxford University Internet & Society Award
• Huffington Post’s 10 Game Changers in Politics
• Tribeca Film Festival Disruptive Innovation Award

Alec Ross recently served for four year as Senior Advisor for Innovation to the Secretary of State and Alec served as the Convener for the Technology, Media & Telecommunications Policy Committee on Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign and served on the Obama-Biden Presidential Transition Team.

Alec started his career as a sixth grade teacher through Teach for America in inner-city Baltimore where he lives with his wife and their three young children.