FELLOWS

TECH's Innovation Fellows Program invites leading scholars and practitioners in their fields to participate in the Harvard innovation community. They provide insight and thought-leadership to top executives in multi-national corporations, leaders of universities, nonprofit organizations, and governments, and early-stage startup founders alike. By developing boundary-breaking programs, curating innovation networks, sharing their independent work, and offering guest lectures, they provide Harvard students and other members of the community with access to an ever-evolving process of exploration, discovery, and development of insights into the theory and practice of innovation and entrepreneurship.  Innovation Fellows are appointed by invitation only. Meet our Innovation Fellows below.

Anas Alsoud, Global Higher Education Innovation Fellow

Professor Dr. Anas Alsoud is a distinguished academic specializing in Informatics, particularly in electronic business and commerce. He holds a BSc in Computer Information Systems from the University of Jordan (2006), an MSc in Managing Information Technology from the University of Salford, UK (2007), and a PhD in Informatics from the University of Reading, UK (2012). Since joining Al-Ahliyya Amman University in 2012, he has been actively engaged in research on e-business, e-government, and cloud computing, with a focus on developing countries.

Currently, Professor Alsoud serves as the Vice President for International Relations and Quality at Al-Ahliyya Amman University. In addition, he is the Director of the Center for Innovation and Excellence and the Director of the Global Engagement Center at the university. An expert in international accreditation and university rankings, Professor Alsoud is also a member of the advisory board for the Times Higher Education Arab Universities Ranking.

Beyond academia, Professor Alsoud has held CEO positions in several start-ups in Jordan. He is deeply passionate about technical education and innovation within higher education institutions.

John Boyce, Biotech Innovation Fellow

John is President and CEO of Exosome Diagnostics.  In 2013, he was awarded the honor as one of the top 15 Technology Luminaries in the state of Massachusetts by the Boston Business Journal and Mass High Technology.  John is an energetic leader and serial entrepreneur who has successfully raised over $100 MM in funding from venture capital, as well as from private investors.  Most recently, John was the CEO of GnuBIO, Inc., a desktop DNA sequencing company that John co-founded in December 2009.  John raised an initial Series A round of $8 MM in September 2012, and grew the company to 54 employees.  Based on the clinical strategy and product roll out initiative that John put in place, GnuBIO was acquired by Bio-Rad in April 2014, providing investors with a significant return with a deal valued at ~6x ROI ($110 MM).  Prior to GnuBIO, John built and sold Affomix (a digital proteomics company) to Illumina for ~$25MM resulting in a 5X ROI for investors and shareholders.  Through numerous additional companies in the life science space, John built and served in key positions to either drive these companies towards a sale or drive towards an IPO.  John also conceived, founded, and ran the Consumer Genetics Conference, which he sold to Cambridge Health Instititue in 2012.

Jorge Cortell, Venture Innovation Fellow

Jorge is a Venture Partner at NLC, Europe's largest Healthtech Venture Builder. A serial entrepreneur, Jorge has founded 6 startups (5 exits and one shut down) in 3 countries and 5 industries. He has been CEO 7 times in 6 industries.

His innovations in healthcare technology include inventing the first precision medicine software platform (2014), the first vendor-neutral digital pathology dicomizer (2012), and the first commercially available augmented reality system for surgery (in 2009).

As an educator, he has delivered keynote talks at events like HIMSS and RSNA, guest lectures at institutions like Oxford, Harvard, MIT, and Stanford, while having taught innovation at the Polytechnic University of Valencia and the Open University of Catalonia. At Harvard, Jorge also serves as an Expert-in-Residence at the Harvard iLab.

He's also a former professional basketball player, and member of the European Commission Expert Group on Venture Philanthropy and Social Investments.

Educated at the University of Oxford (Computer Science graduate), MIT (Entrepreneurship Development Program), and the University of Valencia (postgraduate in Clinical Genomics), he has received innovation and academic awards by: NASA, HIMSS, IBM, Digital Pathology Association, Frost & Sullivan, and the Wall Street Journal.

Sagi (Ziggy) Elster, AI Infrastructure Technology Fellow

Sagi Elster is a global leader in IoT and Edge AI, with extensive experience in strategic management at Fortune 100 companies such as NTT and Spectrum (Charter Communications). In these roles, he led the expansion of products and partnerships to foster innovation in smart cities, smart buildings, and smart manufacturing across domestic and international markets. Previously, Sagi was the Program Director for Smart Cities New York, a member of the World Economic Forum’s Taskforce on Digital Transformation of Real Estate, and co-founder and CEO of a Yale-based software startup.

With academic credentials from Yale, Cambridge, MIT, and the University of Denver, Sagi specializes in the intersection of technology management and emerging innovations. As an AI Infrastructure Technology Fellow at Harvard’s Technology and Entrepreneurship Center, he collaborates with leading academics and industry experts to advance AI infrastructure for various sectors. Sagi resides with his family in the Denver Metropolitan Area, Colorado. Learn more about him here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sagielster/

Verne Harnish, Global Scaleups Fellow

Verne Harnish is founder of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO), with over 18,000 members worldwide; and founded and chaired for fifteen years EO’s premiere CEO program held at MIT, a program in which he still teaches today. 

Founder and CEO of Scaling Up, a global executive education and coaching company with over 290 partners on six continents, Verne has spent the past four decades helping companies scaleup. 

He’s the author of Mastering the Rockefeller Habits; authored The Greatest Business Decisions of All Times," for which Jim Collins wrote the foreword; and wrote Scaling Up (Rockefeller Habits 2.0) which has been translated into 26 languages and has won eight major international book awards including the International Book Award for Best General Business book.  He’s the co-author of Scaling Up Compensation and released Start to Scale in 2024.

Verne serves on several boards including vice chair of The Riordan Clinic; co-founder and chair of Geoversity; and board member of the social venture Million Dollar Women. A private investor in many scaleups, Verne enjoys piano, tennis, and magic as a card-carrying member of the International Brotherhood of Magicians.  

Rick Harriman, Senior Innovation Fellow

Rick Harriman is a Senior Fellow and former CEO and Managing Partner of Synecticsworld.  He works across multiple industries and currently his three areas of deepest interest are social innovation, strategy and building capability for innovation.  Rick is a patent holder and the author of a number of articles and book chapters on creativity in business. Rick co-wrote Creativity, Inc.: Building an Inventive Organization, which was published by The Harvard Business School Press and has been translated into multiple languages.  Learn more about Rick Harriman here.

Deborah Hurley, Global Innovation Policy Fellow

Deborah Hurley is Principal of the consulting firm she founded in 1996, which advises companies, governments, international organizations, civil society, and foundations on advanced science and technology policy.  She is also Adjunct Professor of the Practice of Computer Science, Department of Computer Science, Brown University, and Senior ICT Expert, Pacific Region Infrastructure Facility, Sydney, Australia.  At the OECD, she launched the Working Group on Innovation and Technology Policy and initiated the work on cryptography technologies and policy and on nanotechnology.  Hurley wrote the seminal report on cybersecurity and carried out activities on privacy, information and communication technologies, biotechnology, and new environmental and energy technologies.  She directed the Harvard Information Infrastructure Project.  She served on boards and committees for the U.S. Department of State, American Association for the Advancement of Science, National Academy of Sciences Research Council, and International Federation for Human Rights.  Hurley received the Namur Award of the International Federation for Information Processing in recognition of outstanding contributions, with international impact, to awareness of social implications of information technology.  http://scholar.harvard.edu/deborah_hurley.

Katie McCormick Lelyveld, Strategic Leadership Innovation Fellow

Katie McCormick Lelyveld is a strategic communications, partnerships and public affairs specialist with expertise in reputation management and legacy building. 

She has been the person to whom influential leaders have turned to navigate critical issues with campaign-style execution across the corporate, tech, philanthropy and non-profit sectors.  Katie is the Founder and CEO of KML Strategic Advisors, which serves mission-driven chief executives with national and global impact.

 Among her 15 years in Washington DC, Katie is most proud of her many years leading communications and media relations for First Lady Michelle Obama.

As Mrs. Obama’s second hire and first communications director for their foray into the national spotlight, Katie was responsible for helping to introduce Mrs. Obama to a broad, diverse audience, documented in the best-selling memoir, Becoming, to which Katie was a contributor.  Katie served as a senior advisor to the First Lady for many years, managing all public interaction for the First Family, and crafting image and issue area strategy that generated approval ratings among the highest in history.

Katie is a graduate of Georgetown University and a proud Chicagoan who now lives with her family in Southern California.

Stephanie Kaplan Lewis, Media Innovation Fellow

Stephanie is Co-founder, CEO, and Editor-in-Chief of Her Campus Media and a leader of women’s empowerment, inclusion and belonging in entrepreneurship. She grew Her Campus Media from a concept while an undergraduate at Harvard to the number one media portfolio for college and GenZennial women, reaching over 35 million monthly users across its brands: Her Campus, Spoon University, College Fashionista, InfluenceHer Collective, and Her20s.

Stephanie has been named to Forbes 30 Under 30, Inc.'s 30 Under 30, Businessweek’s 25 Under 25, Glamour’s 20 Amazing Young Women, EY Entrepreneurial Winning Women, The Boston Globe's 25 Under 25, and she has appeared on MSNBC, FOX25 News, NECN, and ABCNewsNow among others. Follow Stephanie on Instagram and Twitter.

Meredith McPherron, Management Innovation Fellow

Meredith offers focused insight on the entrepreneurial journey, deep marketing and general management experience, and a broad network as an angel investor and advisor for startups at the intersection of consumer and tech. Her 25+ year career includes senior management experience in both start-up and established business ventures.

Meredith is currently a co-founder and managing director of studio h ventures, a venture studio that creates, seeds, and incubates high impact startups focused at the intersection of consumer and tech. Most recently, Meredith served as director of the Arthur Rock Center for Entrepreneurship at Harvard Business School where she reignited the HBS entrepreneurial initiative with a focus on supporting all stages of new venture creation for students and alumni.   Meredith received her A.B. from Harvard College (1989) and M.B.A. from Harvard Business School (1993).

Carlos Menendez, Global Innovation Fellow

Carlos Menendez is the president of the Global Commercialization office for MasterCard. In this role, he specializes in developing new business models and leading strategic partnerships/processes to deliver long term growth and technological advancement. This position builds on a successful global career of developing and executing banking, technology and partner based growth strategies. Carlos holds a BA in Economics from Harvard University, an MA in International Studies from the University of Pennsylvania, and an MBA in Finance from The Wharton School.

Antonio Oftelie, Public Sector Innovation Fellow

Antonio Oftelie is TECH's Public Sector Innovation Fellow.  He conducts research at the intersection of law, policy, and technology and administers the Public Sector Innovation Award program.  In addition, Mr. Oftelie is the Executivee Director of Leadership for a Networked World Program (LNW), a think tank started at Harvard Kennedy School in 1987 which provides uniquely powerful leadership summits, practitioner research, and organizational transformation programs.  Learn more about Antonio Oftelie here.

Drake Pusey, Marketing Innovation Fellow

Drake founded Volition Project in 2014 and serves as its Principal Strategist to help empower people through brands that care. He uses his fluency in information architecture and frameworks to uncover the strategic alignments that create opportunities for clients. Drake is a Harvard Paulson School of Engineering Expert-in-Residence at the Harvard Innovation Lab, and empowers the residents of his town as a Human Rights Commissioner.

David S. Ricketts, Strategic Innovation Fellow

David S. Ricketts received his PhD from Harvard University and has held appointments at Carnegie Mellon University, Harvard University, MIT and North Carolina State University. He helped develop the Innovation in Science and Technology course: From Idea to Pitch and co-teaches the course with the TECH Fellows and SEAS faculty. He is an award winning scientist and engineer whose innovations have been featured by Popular Science, Smithsonian, NBC News, CBS News, Fox News, ESPN, and many other science news outlets. He is the recipient of the National Science Foundation CAREER Award and the U.S. Defense Advanced Projects Agency (DARPA) Young Investigator Award. He also serves as the Director of The Innovators Forum, an international forum for senior leaders in the private, public and non-profit sectors to discuss, develop and disseminate new innovation strategies. He also serves as the chair for the Strategic Innovation Summit series. Learn more about David Ricketts here.   

Victor Seidel, Technology Management Innovation Fellow

Victor Seidel is a professor at the F.W. Olin Graduate School of Business, Babson College where he researches topics in technology and innovation management, with an emphasis on the evolving nature of the design process. He focuses on how managers, from those running start-ups to those in large R&D organizations, can best navigate from initial concept to final innovation.  Increasingly, his work investigates how design teams use online communities as sources of continuous innovation.  Learn more about Victor Seidel here.

David Sengeh, Global Innovation Fellow

Dr. David Moinina Sengeh, born and raised in Sierra Leone, completed his Ph.D. at the MIT Media Lab, where his research in the Biomechatronics Group focused on the design of comfortable prosthetic sockets and wearable interfaces. This work was at the intersection of medical imaging, material science, human anatomy, computer-aided design and manufacturing.

David is on Forbes 30 Under 30 in Technology for 2013, a 2014 TED Fellow, on the Wired Smart List 2013, winner of the Lemelson-MIT National Collegiate Student Prize, and other awards. He has been invited to give talks at institutions like the United Nations, corporate and academic organizations on topics related to education, youth innovation, prosthetics design and more.  He is the President and co-founder of the international NGO Global Minimum Inc. (GMin).  David holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Biomedical Engineering from Harvard College.