Tech Leadership Lab Series with Chad Dickerson, Former CEO of Etsy

Join us for a talk with Chad Dickerson, former CEO of Etsy. Chad will be discussing his experiences with leading a fast growing billion dollar company and his lessons from coaching founders early in their career.

Chad runs his own executive coaching practice (Strong Back Open Heart) where he works with CEOs, other C-level execs, and teams to help them grow themselves and their businesses. He has done coaching work in 40+ companies to date and is generally working with ~15 clients at any given time.

Chad was the CEO of Etsy from July 2011 to May 2017, leading the company in its mission and growing it into a global community of creative entrepreneurs and their customers. During that period, he grew the company from a chaotic startup to a global publicly-traded company, growing revenue 14x during that period. Under Chad’s leadership, Etsy was known for its company culture and commitment to social responsibility. Etsy made the Best Places to Work list every year from 2013 to 2017 and the company became a Certified B Corporation in 2012, recognizing the power of business to generate social good.

Chad was CTO at Etsy from September 2008 until July 2011, leading a team that built Etsy’s core platform in its critical early years. Before joining Etsy, Chad led Yahoo’s Brickhouse & Advanced Products incubators, and the Yahoo! Developer Network. He created the Yahoo! Hack Day initiative in 2005, the first internal innovation program of its kind in a large company.

Chad came to Yahoo! from InfoWorld Media Group (IDG) where he served as CTO for nearly five years and wrote a popular weekly column for CTOs. Prior to InfoWorld, Dickerson served as CTO of Salon.com and in various engineering positions at CNN, CNN/Sports Illustrated, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and The (Raleigh, NC) News & Observer.

Chad also served as a Cornell Tech Fellow for three academic years (2019-2021) designing and co-teaching a class called BigCo Studio about building digital products in large companies. He serves on the board of St. Ann’s Warehouse, a non-profit theater in Brooklyn, and the Jalopy Theatre and School of Music, a beloved music institution in Brooklyn. Chad holds a BA in English literature from Duke University where he focused on the works of Shakespeare, the world’s best writer on the challenges of leadership (“Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.”)

This is the third event of the Fubon Center's Tech Leadership Lab, a new collaboration between Fubon Center, ESA and STA. To learn more, please visit: https://www.stern.nyu.edu/experience-stern/about/departments-centers-initiatives/centers-of-research/fubon-center-technology-business-and-innovation/fubon-center-technology-business-and-innovation-events/tech-leadership-lab

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