
He built InterraIT over nearly three decades, then handed over management. His story runs through classrooms, speaking clubs and the questions that technology leaves behind.
Joel Podolny is an economic sociologist turned operator who has spent his career on a single question: how do people actually learn to lead? Handpicked by Steve Jobs in 2008 to build Apple University from scratch, he spent over a decade teaching Apple's executives to think like the company. Before that he was the youngest dean of the Yale School of Management and a tenured professor at Stanford and Harvard. Today he is co-founder and CEO of Honor Education, a San Francisco startup putting human connection at the center of online learning.