Vivek Wadhwa

Vivek Wadhwa is an academic, entrepreneur, and author of five best-selling books: "From Incremental to Exponential"; "Your Happiness Was Hacked"; "The Driver in the Driverless Car"; "Innovating Women"; and "The Immigrant Exodus".

He has been a globally syndicated columnist for The Washington Post and has held appointments as Distinguished Fellow at Harvard Law School’s Labor and Worklife Program, Carnegie Mellon University, and Emory University; adjunct professor at Carnegie Mellon and Duke University; fellow at Stanford Law School and UC Berkeley; and head of faculty at Singularity University.

Vivek is based in California and researches, speaks, and writes about advancing technologies that are transforming our world. These advances – in fields such as robotics, artificial intelligence, computing, synthetic biology, 3D printing, medicine, and nanomaterials – are enabling small teams to solve the grand challenges in education, water, food, shelter, health, and security, which were once only possible for governments and large corporations to tackle.

In 2012, the U.S. Government honored Wadhwa with the title "Outstanding American by Choice" for his commitment to this country and to the common civic values that unite us as Americans. He has also been named one of the world's "Top 100 Global Thinkers" by Foreign Policy magazine in that same year. In June 2013, he appeared on TIME magazine’s list of "Tech 40", which recognizes the forty most influential minds in tech, and in September 2015, he was second on the Financial Times list of "ten men worth emulating". In 2018, he received the Silicon Valley Forum’s Visionary Award, joining the ranks of luminaries who have made significant contributions to technology and innovation.

Earlier in his academic career, Wadhwa studied the effects of globalization on U.S. competitiveness. His 2005 report dispelled myths about India's and China's engineering graduation rates and highlighted the real challenges and opportunities posed by globalization in R&D and innovation. Wadhwa’s subsequent research at top institutions like Harvard and Duke has focused on entrepreneurship, skilled immigration, university-research commercialization, and the competitiveness of nations.

Wadhwa’s research has also highlighted the lack of diversity in Silicon Valley, particularly the underrepresentation of women in executive roles in technology firms. He has collaborated with esteemed academics from Stanford, Harvard, Duke, NYU, UC-Berkeley, and other universities. His work, supported by the Kauffman and Sloan Foundations, has been extensively cited in national and international media, influencing both policy and business practices globally.

Before his academic career, Wadhwa was a technology executive who pioneered innovation in the IT industry. He began as a software developer at CS First Boston (CSFB), where he led the development of advanced technology for software-writing systems. His work led to the spin-off of Seer Technologies, where he was Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, growing the startup into a $118 million publicly traded company. Observing the potential of the Internet, Wadhwa founded Relativity Technologies, which was recognized by Forbes.com as a "Leader of Tomorrow" and by Fortune as one of the 25 coolest companies in the world.

Wadhwa holds a B.A. in Computing Studies from the University of Canberra, Australia, and an MBA from New York University. He is the founding president of the Carolinas chapter of The IndUS Entrepreneurs (TIE), a non-profit global network intended to foster entrepreneurship. He has been featured in thousands of articles globally, including in The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Forbes, The Washington Post, The New York Times, U.S. News and World Report, and Science Magazine, and has made many appearances on major TV stations, including CBS 60 Minutes, PBS, CNN, ABC, NBC, CNBC, and the BBC.