Eric Ries is the founder and CEO of Long-Term Stock Exchange. He created the Lean Startup methodology and is author of The Lean Startup and The Startup Way. Ries founded IMVU and served as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Harvard Business School, IDEO, and Pivotal.

Alexander holds a BA in philosophy and economics from the University of Pennsylvania, a MA in philosophy from the University of Pennsylvania, and a MA in philosophy from Georgetown University.

In his youth, Alexander’s entrepreneurial drive led him to start and run several businesses, both for profit and nonprofit. During college, though, he didn’t see business as a way to change the world, he thought the way to do that was through academia. So he began a PhD program in Philosophy at Georgetown University. As he began to work on a dissertation regarding corporate moral responsibility, he attended the first Conscious Capitalism Annual Conference in 2013, where he was inspired by business leaders dedicated to changing the world. Within a year, he left Georgetown without the PhD and dedicated himself to running one of the businesses he had started during undergrad. Before he joined CCI’s staff, he turned that organization into a multimillion dollar operation