Dr. Alan S. Gregerman is President and Chief Innovation Officer of VENTURE WORKS Inc., a strategy and innovation consulting firm based in the Washington, DC area that helps leading companies and organizations to build winning strategies and create successful new products, services, ventures, customer experiences, and ways of doing business. His customers are a wide range of Fortune 500 corporations, growing firms, entrepreneurial start-ups, nonprofit organizations, and government agencies including Marriott International, Kaiser Permanente, Johnson & Johnson, Mercedes Benz, L-3, Verizon, Discovery Communications, Omnicom, CSC, CGI, Raytheon, the International Finance Corporation, Ritz-Carlton, Unisys, Children’s National Medical Center, the National Civil Rights Museum, and the U.S. Department of State.

Alan is an internationally-respected expert on business strategy, innovation, the customer experience, and unlocking the talent in people at all levels of organizations. In the past 20 years he has helped more than 300 teams and organizations to create important innovations—with a 90% success rate. He is also an award-winning teacher, best-selling author, and keynote speaker who has been called “one of the most original thinkers in business today” and “the Robin Williams of business consulting.” His first book, “Lessons from the Sandbox,“ provided a powerful formula for business and personal success based on the magic of childhood. His second book, “Surrounded by Geniuses”—winner of the Axiom Award as a “Best Leadership Book”—showed companies and organizations how to unlock more compelling value by finding powerful insight in their own people and the world around them. His new book, “The Necessity of Strangers,” is all about the power of connecting with and learning from people who are very different than us as the key to greater innovation, collaboration, and success. Before starting VENTURE WORKS, Alan was Director of Entrepreneurial Services for a national consulting firm, Special Assistant for Program Operations at the U.S. Department of Commerce, and the first Visiting Scholar in Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the Library of Congress. He has also worked as a mapmaker, subway mechanic, hotel housekeeper, and is currently an Adjunct Professor of Innovation at Georgetown University and the Robert Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland.

Alan earned his B.A. in geography, summa cum laude, from Northwestern University, and his M.A. in economic geography and Ph.D. in urban and technological planning, with the highest honors, from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. In his free time, he is the founder and President of Passion for Learning, Inc., where he is involved in efforts to build innovative partnerships between the business community and low-income schools in order to close the achievement gap for at-risk children. Alan is also an active member of Leadership Greater Washington, serves on the board of the A-Games, and volunteers in the local schools.

He and his wife Lisa have three children, Sara, Carly, and Noah, and a very goofy rescued Flat-Coated Retriever named Vincent, and live in the Washington, D.C. area.

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