Lyel has deep expertise in launching and scaling innovative products, services, and organizations at the intersection of technology and social impact.

He is currently Visiting Faculty and the Head of the Public Interest Technology Studio at Cornell Tech, where he leads programming for 400+ graduate students on creating tech to create a more just future, and co-leads the Startups & Society Initiative (SSI) — a non profit research project backed by Ford, OSF, and Omidyar to support founders and investors with responsible innovation practices. As part of SSI, Lyel Co-founded the Responsible Innovation Founders Summit — an annual event that has attracted 700+ global tech leaders including founders backed by Y-Combinator, General Catalyst, and Sequoia, and published the Responsible Innovation Primer for Founders — a distillation of 100+ interviews of influential tech and civil society leaders about building tech companies responsibly.

Lyel was a Co-founder of Swayable (YC W18), which uses data science to create more persuasive media for many of the worlds leading advocacy organizations, social + political campaigns, and brands, including the ACLU, Airbnb, and the Biden-Harris Campaign. He has also worked with Google, Girls Who Code, New America, The Rockefeller Foundation, among others. He has been an Adjunct Professor of Social Innovation at NYU, and a Fellow at the MIT Civic Data Lab.

Following nearly a decade of building technology education and economic mobility programs in under-invested neighborhoods across the country, Lyel became an early executive at The Flatiron School — the country's leading school for web and mobile development that has worked with the White House and The City of New York on groundbreaking economic mobility initiatives. Under Lyel's leadership, Flatiron Precollege built a diverse, mission-driven, 60-person team, expanded to 13 cities, achieved 10x year-over-year revenue growth, and built teacher-training programs with 100 NPS.

Lyel is a frequent keynote speaker and panelist on Public Interest Technology, Social Innovation, and the Future of Work. He has spoken at Google, Techonomy, 500 Global, Sorenson Impact, Mozfest, VentureCrush, MIT, SXSW, Spotify, Techonomy, Merck, the US State Department, The Mexico Foundation for Science, among others. His work has appeared in The Stanford Social Innovation Review, Techonomy, Wired, Fast Company, Techcrunch, Impact Alpha, Bloomberg, and more. Lyel sat on the boards of the Centre for Social Innovation, The Bronx Academy for Software Engineering, Sourcemap, and is currently an advisor to Elis, Kibo School, and MEET.org.

He holds degrees in Physics and Political Science from MIT, where he was a Burchard Social Science Scholar, and an advanced degree in Business, Media + Technology, and Education from NYU where he was a Reynolds Fellow in Social Entrepreneurship. He was named a World Economic Forum Global Shaper in 2013.

He is an avid if marginally competent surfer, and holds Advanced Open Water Scuba and Freediver Level I certifications. He also enjoys LGBTQ+ literature, guava soda, and air-drumming on the subway.