Victor Bennett

Victor Manuel Bennett De Pablo, PhD (Victor Bennett) is a Professor of Entrepreneurship and Strategy at the University of Utah’s Eccles School of Business. His primary expertise is how technology affects the creation of entrepreneurial ventures and the existing companies’ ability to sustain performance.

He previously served as the Senior Economist for Technology and Competition Policy at the White House Council of Economic Advisers in the Obama administration and a Principal at Initialized Capital. Victor has held prior academic appointments at Duke University and the University of Southern California.

His research has been published in top journals including Management Science, Strategic Management Journal, Strategy Science, and Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes and has been covered in press outlets including the Wall Street Journal, Marketplace (APM), Quartz, Rolling Stone, and Bloomberg Businessweek.

Victor is the founder of Anima Sana Coffee, a coffee company giving 100% of profits to black and hispanic mental health causes. He is the administrator of the Manuel Bennett Art Trust, and previously served on the board of Zoo Labs, an accelerator in Oakland, CA working to help musicians turn their art into a business.

Victor regularly consults or gives keynote speeches for clients ranging from established businesses (including Clorox, Diageo, Google, IceMiller, Virgin America, Wells Fargo), startups (including AIPatents), and government agencies and NGOs (including the Kauffman Foundation, the organization for Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation, and New Zealand’s Ministry of Business, Innovation, and Employment).

Before graduate study, Victor worked at Google, where he received patents for technologies from detecting click fraud to music classification. He received his undergraduate training at Stanford University advised by Nobel Laureate Kenneth Arrow and earned his doctorate in Business and Public Policy at Berkeley.