Harper Reed

Harper Reed is a US-based technology engineer, innovator and entrepreneur. Called a “tech pioneer”, “digital wizard” and “hard to miss in a room”, he is fascinated by how technology continues to shape, transform and empower human behaviour. He is currently the Head of Commerce at Braintree, a PayPal Company.

In 2012 Harper was responsible for delivering Barack Obama’s online campaign and get-out-the-vote programme. As Chief Technology Officer at Obama’s campaign HQ in Chicago, Harper was the man who was responsible for engineering perhaps the most sophisticated political campaign of all time.

From 2005 to 2009, Harper Reed was the CTO of Chicago-based clothing company Threadless, one of the first successful crowdsourcing companies, and helped increase revenue tenfold during that period. From 2009 to 2012 he consulted for companies like Rackspace, an innovative cloud-based website host, and Sandbox Industries, a forward-thinking venture capital company which funds hundreds of tech projects in their early stages and then launches the best few. Harper has also developed a number of community based apps in Chicago.

Harper is a brilliant speaker on how technology can enhance business performance, foster organisational creativity and build strong teams. He also speaks eloquently on the state of data security on the internet and the demographics and constituencies of US politics.