Lyel Resner has deep expertise in launching and scaling innovative products, services, and organizations at the intersection of technology and social impact. He is currently Visiting Faculty and the head of the Public Interest Technology Studio at Cornell Tech, where he leads programming for 400+ graduate students on creating tech to create a more just future, and co-leads the Startups & Society Initiative (SSI) — a non profit research project backed by Ford, OSF, and Omidyar. As part of SSI, Resner co-founded the Responsible Innovation Founders Summit — an annual event that has attracted 700+ global tech leaders including founders backed by Y-Combinator, General Catalyst, and Sequoia, and published the Responsible Innovation Primer for Founders — a distillation of 100+ interviews of influential tech and civil society leaders about building tech companies responsibly.
Resner was a co-founder of Swayable (YC W18), which uses data science to create more persuasive media for many of the worlds leading advocacy organizations, social + political campaigns, and brands, including the ACLU, Airbnb, and the Biden-Harris Campaign. He was an early executive at The Flatiron School — the country’s leading school for web and mobile development that has worked with the White House and The City of New York on groundbreaking economic mobility initiatives. Under Lyel’s leadership, Flatiron Precollege built a diverse, mission-driven, 60-person team, expanded to 13 cities, achieved 10x year-over-year revenue growth, and built teacher-training programs with 100 NPS.
He holds degrees in Physics and Political Science from MIT, where he was a Burchard Social Science Scholar, and an advanced degree in Business, Media + Technology, and Education from NYU where he was a Reynolds Fellow in Social Entrepreneurship. He was named a World Economic Forum Global Shaper in 2013.
Lyel has deep expertise in launching and scaling innovative products, services, and organizations at the intersection of technology and social impact.
He is an avid if marginally competent surfer.