Studio Faculty & Practitioners

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.

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

Website

Google Scholar

Thatcher Bell is Head of Startup Studio at Cornell Tech, where he works with faculty, students and administrators to help productize and commercialize their research and ideas.

Thatcher has been a venture capitalist for ten years as well as an angel investor, having made approximately 30 investments in technology startups. Thatcher is a Venture Partner at Gotham Ventures, where he has led numerous investments, including Gotham’s investment in SinglePlatform, sold to Constant Contact (NASDAQ: CTCT). He was previously a Senior Analyst at North Hill Ventures, the venture capital affiliate of Capital One, where he worked on the firm’s investments in DealerTrack (NASDAQ: TRAK) and Higher One (NYSE: ONE).

Before North Hill, Thatcher worked at two different startups after beginning his career as a consultant. He received his bachelor’s degree in Engineering from Cornell University and MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Thatcher serves on the board of NY Tech Meetup.

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.

Chad Dickerson was CEO of Etsy from July 2011 to May 2017. He grew Etsy from a chaotic startup to a publicly-traded company, growing revenue 14x during his tenure while leading intense organizational growth and change. Under Chad’s leadership, Etsy was known for its leadership in combining high-growth business with an intense commitment to values-led culture and social responsibility.

Chad has a deep engineering background and served as CTO at Etsy from September 2008 until stepping into the CEO role three years later. Before joining Etsy, Chad held leadership roles in technology and product management at companies of many sizes and stages: Yahoo, IDG/InfoWorld, Salon, CNN, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and The (Raleigh, NC) News & Observer.

Bradley Horowitz is a Vice President of Product Management at Google. Most recently he helped create Area 120, Google’s incubator for internally-sourced innovation. He’s led a large number of products, programs and initiatives at Google — including Google for Entrepreneurs, Google Photos, Gmail, Google Voice, blogger, and Google News.

Before joining Google in February 2008, Horowitz was Yahoo’s vice president of Advanced Development where he drove the acquisitions of Flickr and MyBlogLog, launched the Brickhouse incubator and developed new products like Yahoo! Pipes. Additionally, he was responsible for the company’s initiative to open up its platform which included overseeing the Yahoo Developer Network (YDN). Previously, he was co-founder and CTO of Virage, where he oversaw the technical direction of the company from its founding through its IPO and eventual acquisition by Autonomy.

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

Website

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.