Joi Ito's Bio

(Full name is Joichi Ito or 伊藤穰一)

Joichi "Joi" Ito is a venture capitalist, entrepreneur, writer and scholar.

Ito is the President of the Chiba Institute of Technology (Chiba Tech). He is a Director of gmjp, an early-stage web3 fund, the Director of the Center for Radical Transformation at Chiba Tech, and a Visiting Professor at Fujita Medical University. He is also the Co-Founder of the Neurodiversity School in Tokyo. He serves on the board of the Gelephu Mindfulness City Authority (GMCA) and is the CEO of the Gelephu Investment and Development Corporation (GIDC).

He served as Director of the MIT Media Lab from 2011 to 2019. Ito was Chairman of the Board of PureTech Health and previously served as Board Chair and Chief Executive of Creative Commons. He has served on other boards, including at The New York Times Company, Sony Corporation, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), The Mozilla Foundation, The Open Source Initiative, and The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC).

Ito was an early investor in many startup companies, including Flickr, littleBits, FormLabs, Kickstarter, ASAPP and Twitter.

In 2011, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Oxford Internet Institute for his work as one of the world's leading Internet activists. He received an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from The New School in New York City in 2013 and an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Tufts University two years later. In 2013, he was inducted into the SXSW Interactive Hall of Fame. In 2017, he received the IRI Medal and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The following year, the Frederick Douglass Family Initiatives and the Antiracist Research & Policy Center named Ito to the FD200, a list of 200 people whose work and activism on behalf of equality and freedom reflect the spirit of Frederick Douglass. Ito was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award from EPIC in 2019.

He earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree from Keio University Graduate School of Media and Governance in 2018 for his thesis, The Practice of Change. He is a Guest Researcher at Keio University's Cyber Civilization Research Center.

His writings, podcasts and other works can be found on his website.

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Short Bio:

Joichi "Joi" Ito is a venture capitalist, entrepreneur, writer and scholar focusing on the transformation of society and technology.

Ito is President of the Chiba Institute of Technology (Chiba Tech), where he also directs the Center for Radical Transformation. He is the Co-Founder of the Neurodiversity School in Tokyo, serves on the board of the Gelephu Mindfulness City Authority (GMCA), and is the Chief Executive Officer of the Gelephu Investment and Development Corporation (GIDC).

He served as Director of the MIT Media Lab from 2011 to 2019. Ito was previously the Chief Executive of Creative Commons and a Board Member at The New York Times, Sony, the Knight Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, ICANN, and The Mozilla Foundation.