Steven Strauss is an Advanced Leadership Fellow at Harvard University. Immediately prior to Harvard, Steven was a Managing Director at the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) where he spearheaded the creation of the Center for Economic Transformation at NYCEDC, and a number of its high impact initiatives including: Applied Sciences NYC (Mayor Bloomberg’s project to build a new engineering campus in NYC), General Assembly, the 160 Varick Street Incubator (in partnership with Trinity Realty and NYU-Poly), the NYC NextIdea Business Plan Competition, NYC BigApps, Hive@55, NYC Media Lab, and the NYC Entrepreneurial Fund.

Steven was a co-author of the following major policy reports issued by Mayor Bloomberg: Media.NYC.2020, Fashion.NYC.2020, Edutech.NYC.2020 and the NYCEDC Innovation Index. Steven was elected as a member of the Silicon Alley 100 in 2010-2011 (http://www.businessinsider.com/sa100-2010#steve-strauss-58).

Prior to joining NYCEDC, Steven was a Director and Senior Advisor at the World Economic Forum in the Financial Institutions group and managed the Forum’s relationships with a portfolio of financial service CEOs. Steven was responsible for the Forum’s inaugural Financial Development Index, a comprehensive look at global financial systems, and co-authored the Forum’s report on the Convergence of Insurance with Capital Markets.

Before that, Steven spent five years with the London office of McKinsey & Company serving clients in the Private and Public Sectors, including the Economic Development Board of a Middle Eastern country, the Bank Insurance Fund of a major OECD country, the National Health Service and the primary health care regulator of a major European country, and a major Sovereign Wealth Fund. He also worked in the Private Sector on a variety of strategy and risk management issues. Steven’s work experience also includes sales and trading at a number of financial service firms as well.

Steven's opinion pieces have been published at: The Huffington Post, Business Insider, and Project-Syndicate. He holds a B.A. from New York University and a Ph.D. in Management from Yale University.