Deborah Hanus

Deborah Hanus is the co-founder and CEO of Sparrow, a San Francisco-based HR technology company that combines AI automation with human expertise to manage employee leave. Armed with degrees from MIT (BS in Computer Science and Brain & Cognitive Sciences, MEng in EECS) and a Harvard PhD in Computer Science & Machine Learning, she left academia after watching six close friends struggle through the leave process and built the company from scratch as a solo founder. Sparrow has raised $55M in total funding (Series B led by Silver Lake Waterman in July 2025), serves 1,000+ companies including OpenAI and Reddit, and has saved customers over $350 million in payroll costs.