Alec Ross

Alec Ross is an American technology policy expert who was Senior Advisor for Innovation to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the duration of her term as Secretary of State. After leaving the Department of State in 2013, he joined the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University as a Senior Fellow. Ross is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Industries of the Future and The Raging 2020s: Companies, Countries, People – and the Fight for Our Future.

The Industries of the Future has been translated into twenty-four languages and was named the 2016 Book of the Year by the TriBeCa Film Festival's Disruptive Innovation Foundation. Ross was a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at Johns Hopkins University. In addition, he is a distinguished visiting professor at the University of Bologna Business School. He is also a Board Partner at Amplo, a global venture capital firm.

Ross was born and raised in Charleston, West Virginia. His father was a lawyer, and his mother was a paralegal. At age 12, he moved to Italy for a year to live with his grandfather, Ray DePaulo, the commercial minister at the U.S. embassy in Rome. Ross attended college at Northwestern University.

After graduating in 1994 from Northwestern University with a B.A. in history, Ross moved to Baltimore to work at Booker T. Washington Middle School as a Teach for America AmeriCorps Member. Ross taught for two years and then accepted a position as special assistant to the president of the Enterprise Foundation. He focused on developing business, technology, and fundraising strategies.

In 2000, he co-founded One Economy, a global nonprofit that uses innovative approaches to deliver the power of technology and information about education, jobs, health care, and other vital issues to low-income people.

In April 2017, Ross launched a campaign for the Democratic nomination for Governor of Maryland in 2018. In February 2018, he announced as his running mate Julie Verratti, a craft brewery co-owner, former Senior Advisor at the Small Business Administration, and LGBT political activist. In June 2018, Ross finished seventh in the nine-candidate Democratic primary with 2.4% of the votes.