James Slezak

James is founder and chief executive of Swayable, a startup that measures how
content persuades. Swayable is backed by investors including Y Combinator and Sequoia.
He was previously Vice President and Chief of Operations of NYT Global, the international
digital team of The New York Times, founding partner at social change agency Purpose, a
strategy consultant at McKinsey, and co-founded Peers.org, working with the founders of
Airbnb. James originally moved to the U.S. from Australia to earn a PhD in experimental physics
at Cornell, where he published discoveries in journals including PNAS, Science, Nature and
Physical Review, while also studying economics under Kaushik Basu, later the Chief Economist
of the World Bank. His passion for social advocacy led him to start Swayable, which initially
focused on advocacy campaigns before branching out into brands.