Studio Faculty & Practitioners

Josh Hartmann is the Chief Practice Officer of Cornell Tech. Josh leads efforts to establish the culture and programs of Cornell Tech, including studio-based education, product development and startup activities, student engagement with organizations and practitioners, and more. Josh has spent his career building and leading teams in the New York technology community. Prior to joining Cornell Tech, he was COO of Plusgrade, a technology company serving the airline industry, CTO of Amplify, CTO of Intent Media, and CTO of Travelocity. Josh received an S.B. in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1994.

Karan Girotra, Professor of Operations, Technology and Information Management (OTIM), is the recipient of the Charles H. Dyson Family Professor of Management chair and a Professor at Cornell Tech and in the Johnson School at Cornell University.

Research focus: Business models in the areas of urban living, smart transportation and e-commerce

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Jenny Fielding is one of the most active global pre-seed investors, having invested in 300+ companies as the first money in. As the cofounder and Managing Partner of Everywhere Ventures, Jenny has built a thriving community of 500+ founders and operators who help source, diligence, and invest in the next generation of startups across 3 core verticals: money, health, and work.

Prior to launching her own fund, Jenny spent 7.5 years as the Managing Director of Techstars where she invested in a portfolio of companies with a current market cap over $10B. Jenny is a 2x founder, a lawyer by training, and an adjunct professor at Columbia University and Cornell Tech.

Sam Dix is a venture builder, startup coach, and adjunct professor. He specializes in developing design-led new healthcare ventures for venture studios and helping founders discover product-market-fit. Over Sam’s career he has helped to launch more than 75 new ventures that have impacted over 10 million lives and raised more than $200M in funding. In addition to being Co-Head of Startup Studio at Cornell Tech, Sam is currently contracting with both VCs and private companies to discover, define, and design new growth opportunities.

Alberto Escalarte is the CTO and Head of Product at Elektra Health, a digital startup revolutionizing women’s health, specifically menopause. Previously, Alberto was the founding CTO of Skylyte, where he impacted workplace mental health by applying machine learning.

In early 2018, he joined Human Ventures as an Entrepreneur-in-residence and founded Hugo Labs, a mobility company disrupting school transportation. Hugo’s mission is to acquire and grow school transportation businesses by deploying innovative technology and implementing efficient, unified operations.

Before that, Alberto built the next generation in media networks as the founding CTO of Throwing Fruit. The company had a successful exit and was acquired by a global media company. Prior to joining Throwing Fruit, Alberto was the CEO of Paris-based collaboration service, FileChat.

As a Venture Partner at Collaborative Fund, Alberto invested in companies like Makespace, Hopscotch and GoTenna and incubated Playful Data, an online reputation manager for kids. Before becoming a VC, Alberto co-founded a social good-focused gaming company, Sojo Studios, that attracted investors like Ellen Degeneres and Justin Bieber due to its mission. Sojo was acquired by Zynga for $120M. Alberto also co-founded TigerTag, the first global lost & found service, an early precursor of the Internet of Things.

At Entertainment Media Works, as founding CTO, Alberto built services that allowed viewers to buy products from TV, movies, and music videos through partnering with leading entertainment studios, music labels and brands.

In the early days of the Internet, Alberto led projects for a long list of corporations that include AT&T, Delta Airlines, General Motors, IBM and Kraft Foods, among others.

Alberto holds degrees in Self-Driving Engineering and Deep Learning from Udacity, a degree in Computer Science from The Pontificia Universidade Catolica in Rio de Janeiro, a Masters in Computer Engineering from The Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and was a faculty at Parsons School of New Design for eight years.

In his downtime, Alberto can often be found watching Brazilian soccer, cooking for his family, or sweating it out in a CrossFit box.

Lyel is currently Visiting Faculty and the Head of the Public Interest Technology Studio at Cornell Tech, and co-leads the Startups & Society Initiative — a non-profit research project backed by Ford, OSF, and Omidyar to support founders and investors with responsible innovation practices.

Lyel 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 and Airbnb.

Lyel was also 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.

Lyel is a frequent keynote speaker and panelist on Public Interest Technology, Social Innovation, and the Future of Work. He has spoken at Google, 500Global, VentureCrush, MIT, SXSW, Spotify, Techonomy, the US State Department, and The Mexico Foundation for Science, among others. His work has appeared in The Stanford Social Innovation Review, Wired, Fast Company, Techcrunch, Bloomberg, and more. Lyel has sat on the boards of the Centre for Social Innovation, The Bronx Academy for Software Engineering, Sourcemap, and is currently an advisor to Elis, Kibo School, and MEET.org.

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.

He is an avid if marginally competent surfer, and enjoys LGBTQ+ literature, guava soda, and air-drumming on the subway.

Greg Pass is a Professor of Practice at Cornell Tech and in the Johnson School at Cornell University. Greg teaches the Startup & Product Ideas course in the Cornell Tech Studio (https://tech.cornell.edu/studio/), and advises efforts to improve the culture and programs of Cornell Tech, including studio-based education, product development and startup activities, and student engagement with organizations and practitioners.

He is also the founder of \Art at Cornell Tech (https://backslashart.org), creating new art forms and art technologies that escape convention.

A serial entrepreneur, Greg was the first CTO and VP of Engineering at Twitter, the Co-Founder and CTO at realtime search startup Summize, acquired by Twitter, and the Co-Founder and CTO at image search startup ToFish, acquired by AOL. He is also Chairman of Rhizome, supporting contemporary art that creates richer and more critical digital cultures, and is an active advisor to startup companies and nonprofits, including Medium.

Greg received a B.A. in Computer Science with a concentration in Cognitive Studies from Cornell University in 1997.

Helen Nissenbaum is a Professor at Cornell Tech and in the Information Science Department at Cornell University.

Research focus: Ethical perspective on policy, law, science, and engineering relating to information technology, computing, digital media and data science

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