Tom Byers

At Stanford University since 1995, Professor Tom Byers focuses on education regarding principled entrepreneurship and responsible technology innovation. He is the first holder of the Entrepreneurship Professorship endowed chair in the School of Engineering and a Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education. He has been a faculty director since the inception of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program (STVP), which serves as the entrepreneurship center for the School of Engineering including its Mayfield Fellows Program, the Stanford eCorner, and its PEAK applied ethics project. He has also been a key advisor to the Hacking for Defense and Hacking for Climate projects to better connect entrepreneurship education with national security and sustainability challenges. He hosted 50 Roundtables on Entrepreneurship Education (REE) on five continents over 15 years. Tom is a lead author of the Technology Ventures: From Idea to Enterprise textbook from McGraw-Hill, now in its 5th edition.

Tom is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the board of trustees at Menlo College. His service on advisory boards includes Harvard Business School and Conservation International. In the past, Tom was a visiting professor at London Business School, University College London, Duke University, UNC-Chapel Hill, and UAE’s Higher Colleges of Technology. He was a recipient of the prestigious Gordon Prize by the National Academy of Engineering in the USA and Stanford University’s Gores Award, which is their highest honor for excellence in teaching. Tom was executive vice president and general manager of Symantec Corporation during its formation and started his career at Accenture. Tom holds a BS in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research and an MBA from UC Berkeley. He also earned a PhD in Business Administration (Management Science) at UC Berkeley.