Jeffrey Harris

Jeffrey Harris has spent over 30 years in the venture capital and private equity business funding and building innovative companies in the U.S. and internationally, from start-ups to buyouts, and across numerous industries.

From 1983-2011 he worked at Warburg Pincus where he was a senior partner of the firm involved primarily with technology, telecoms and energy-related businesses. In 2012 he started his own investment and advisory firm, Global Reserve Group, focused on the energy industry. Professor Harris began teaching at Columbia Business School in 2005 where he has created two courses: Venture Capital: Risk and Opportunity, and more recently, Innovate or Die. His new course offering - Risk and Opportunity: Investing In Innovative Companies - draws on his experiences in his day job, as well as what he has learned from his teaching and research on entrepreneurship and venture capital.

He has authored numerous case studies published by Columbia CaseWorks, and his book Transformative Entrepreneurs: How Walt Disney, Steve Jobs, Muhammad Yunus and Other Innovators Succeeded was published in 2012 by Palgrave Macmillan. He is past Chairman of the National Venture Capital Association, and currently is a member of the Board of Trustees for New York-Presbyterian Hospital, Friends of the High Line, and the Cranbrook Educational Community. He has a B.S. in Economics from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and an MBA from Harvard Business School.