Philip Auerswald is the founding board chair and president of the National Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. He is also the chief academic officer of the Hult Prize Foundation, the founder of Innovations journal (MIT Press), and a professor of public policy at George Mason University. Auerswald has published over fifty books, peer-reviewed articles, book chapters and professional reports on entrepreneurship, innovation, and public policy. He is among the leading authorities globally on policies to enable entrepreneurial ecosystems. He is most recently the author of The Code Economy: A Forty-Thousand-Year History (Oxford University Press, 2017) and The Coming Prosperity: How Entrepreneurs Are Transforming the Global Economy (Oxford University Press, 2012). He has blogged and written op-eds for The New York Times, Harvard Business Review, Forbes, The International Herald Tribune, and The San Francisco Chronicle, among other outlets. Prior to joining the faculty at George Mason University, Professor Auerswald was a lecturer and assistant director of the Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Professor Auerswald holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Washington and a B.A. (political science) from Yale University.

Christopher Doorley is an original member of the team creating the National Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. In 2009 he founded Velocity Strategies, a digital media agency based in Northern Virginia, and is the co-founder of the non-profit DesignDonor. He is an active member of the DC entrepreneurship community, having advised and invested in a series of companies and ventures. Christopher is a graduate of Boston University and is excited to celebrate and support the spirit of innovation and entrepreneurship through the NCEI. He can be reached at cdoorley@ncei.us.