Rob Lalka is an author, entrepreneur, and professor at Tulane.  His new book, The Venture Alchemists: How Big Tech Turned Profits Into Power, was one of the 22 best business books of 2024 according to the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing, and it has been cited in Newsweek, Forbes, Rolling Stone, NBC News, The Guardian, and other publications.

The book also received significant critical acclaim. Kirkus Reviews called it “An impressive work of research and intellectual reflection," adding this praise: “The body of work addressing this subject now seems inexhaustible, but this book must count as among its most clear-eyed, well researched, and morally uncompromising examples.” MIT Technology Review praised Lalka’s accomplishments as a “thorough and tenacious researcher” and commended the book for “deflating the myth that these entrepreneurs were somehow gifted seers of (and investors in) a future the rest of us simply couldn’t comprehend or predict,” while exposing “the price we’ve paid in handing over unprecedented power to Big Tech—and explain[ing] why it’s imperative we start taking it back.”

Lalka was previously an American diplomat, serving in both Republican and Democratic administrations as a Presidential Management Fellow. He served in the U.S. Department of State’s Office of Global Partnerships and was on the Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff. For his work advancing global entrepreneurship, he was recognized with the State Department’s Superior Honor Award and its Meritorious Honor Award; he also received the State Department’s Group Award and USAID’s Superior Group Award during his career in government.

He then became a director at one of the world’s most active venture capital groups, which has supported more than 1,100 entrepreneurs in 28 countries in a decade. He was also a senior advisor at a philanthropy with one of the world’s largest annual grantmaking budgets, the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, which provides over $150 million each year to charitable causes, journalists, and activists in 40 countries.  In 2012, he co-founded a consulting firm that supported leading impact investors, startup enterprises, and public corporations to grow their businesses while measuring and maximizing their impact.  It was acquired in 2019.

Lalka is currently Professor of Practice in Management and the Albert R. Lepage Professor in Business at Tulane University’s A.B. Freeman School of Business, and Executive Director of the Albert Lepage Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. He has received the A.B. Freeman School’s Excellence in Intellectual Contributions Award three times.

Lalka is an advisor to Fortune and Statista for their list of America’s most innovative companies, an advisor to CNBC for its list of the companies best able to disrupt established industries and public companies, and is a founding member and advisor to Nieux, a community formed to make a positive impact on New Orleans through technology and innovation.

Lalka serves on the boards of Public Democracy, Inc., and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Louisiana.  He is chairman of the board of Public Democracy, and at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Louisiana, he has been the founding chairman of the cybersecurity committee, the secretary of the governance committee, and has served on the investment and finance and audit committees.

He graduated from Yale University, cum laude with distinction in both history and English, holds his master’s degree in public policy from Duke University, and earned executive education certificates from Harvard Business School.