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.

Areas of Research:

Artificial intelligence
Digital transformation
Business model innovation
Innovation management
Supply chain management
Entrepreneurship
Sustainable living

Academic Degrees:

Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania, 2007
A.M., University of Pennsylvania, 2007
B.Tech., Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, 2002

Research Labs and Initiatives:

Abundant Intelligence Lab
Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability
Cornell FinTech Initiative

Website

Google Scholar

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.

Greg Pass is a Professor of Practice at Cornell Tech and in the Johnson School at Cornell University. Greg teaches Applied Technopoetics as an elective course in the Cornell Tech Studio.

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 the Andrew H. and Ann R. Tisch Professor of information science at Cornell Tech and the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science.

Areas of Research: 

Philosophy, ethics, and politics of digital technology
Privacy, AI and ethics
Values in technology design

Academic Degrees: 

Ph.D., Stanford University, 1983
M.A., Stanford University, 1978
B.A., University of the Witwatersrand, 1975

Research Labs and Initiatives: 

Digital Life Initiative

Website

Gautam Ahuja is the Eleanora and George Landew Professor of Management and professor of management and organizations at the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University. A leading scholar in strategy and innovation, his research focuses on competitive analysis, technology and innovation, globalization, and the role of inter-organizational arrangements such as mergers, acquisitions, and alliances in shaping firm performance.

Professor Ahuja previously served on the faculty at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan from 2001 to 2017 and at the University of Texas at Austin from 1996 to 2001. He also served as a visiting professor of business administration at Harvard Business School during the 2014–2015 academic year.

Ahuja’s research has received more than 30,000 citations and has earned numerous global honors. He was named a Fellow of the Strategic Management Society in 2023 and a Fellow of the Academy of Management in 2021. In 2019, he received the TIM Distinguished Scholar Award for lifetime achievement in research from the Technology and Innovation Management Division of the Academy of Management.

In addition to his research contributions, Ahuja has held significant editorial leadership roles in the field. He served as editor-in-chief of Organization Science and has also served as associate editor for Management Science and senior editor for Organization Science and Strategy Science.

Ahuja teaches strategy and competitive analysis and is widely recognized for his excellence in teaching and mentorship. At Cornell, he has received the Cornell Tech Best Professor Award as well as the Johnson School’s Apple Award, given annually by the graduating class to the faculty member who had the greatest impact in the classroom. In 2016, he received the BPS Wiley Outstanding Educator Award from the Strategy Division of the Academy of Management for his lifetime teaching contributions. In 2011, Bloomberg Businessweek ranked him number two on its list of the Most Popular Professors in the United States. As a doctoral advisor, he has mentored many students who now serve as faculty members at leading institutions around the world.