Rob Lalka is Professor of Practice in Management, the Albert R. Lepage Professor in Business at Tulane University’s A.B. Freeman School of Business, and the 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, most recently for the critically acclaimed new book, The Venture Alchemists: How Big Tech Turned Profits Into Power, from Columbia University Press, which was one of the 22 best business books of 2024 according to the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing.

Lalka moved to New Orleans from Washington, DC, where he was a director at Village Capital and a senior advisor at the Howard G. Buffett Foundation. Prior, 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 which he was recognized with the State Department’s Superior Honor Award and its Meritorious Honor Award.

Lalka currently serves on the boards of Public Democracy, Inc., and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Louisiana. 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.