Teddy Zmrhal

Teddy Zmrhal is a human centered serial entrepreneur/intrapreneur, advisor/investor, and learning designer.

Over the course of his career, he has co-founded and built a number of companies and non-profit boards, helped build or rebuild organizations inside IDEO and Salesforce, and advised, and invested in multiple startups.

He is a Senior Managing Director of Strategic Innovation at Salesforce, providing a set of global talent, marketing and alliance services to Salesforce flagship customer facing innovation program, Ignite. He currently serves as the Global Head of Transformation of Ignite.

Prior to Salesforce, Teddy was a Director at the IDEO Singapore Studio where he led the transformation of the Studio from 90% Singapore public sector serving to 90% Southeast Asia and Australia private sector serving.

Teddy has taught and mentored budding entrepreneurs, designers and innovators at various academic institutions and startup accelerators in his home in the Bay Area, his hometown of Chicago, and his home away from home in Singapore.

He has taught entrepreneurship, business model innovation and strategy, corporate innovation and new ventures, and design at the Haas School of Business, both the Kellogg School of Management and the McCormick School of Engineering at Northwestern University, The Institute of Design in Chicago and the groundbreaking Design MBA program at the California College of the Arts, where he was also the Associate Chair. He also co-taught a course on Designing the Future at the National University of Singapore, and an Executive Education course on Innovation and New Product Development at Nanyang Technological University.

Teddy served as a mentor at Excelerate (now part of TechStars) in Chicago, and Startup Weekend, Lean Startup Machine, The Hub, Founder’s Institute and Greenstart in the Bay Area.

Teddy earned a Bachelor of Arts in International Business and Spanish from Illinois Wesleyan University, a Master of Learning Sciences from Northwestern University, and MBAs in Strategy, Entrepreneurship, and Organizational Behavior from Columbia and London Business Schools.

Teddy sits on the Board of Alonzo King’s Lines Ballet in San Francisco, and the Steering Committee for the Socrates Program and the National Vanguard Society of Fellows Leadership Board, both for the Aspen Institute.