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Luke Burgis is Entrepreneur-in-Residence and Director of Programs at the Ciocca Center for Principled Entrepreneurship at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C, as well as an Assistant Professor of Practice in the Busch School of Business.
Mr. Burgis worked in the investment banking industries in New York and Hong Kong, as well as in the private equity industry with a focus on energy investments. He founded three companies in his twenties ranging from technology to food distribution and consumer products, and was named a “Top 25 Entrepreneur Under 25” by Business Week in 2006.
Mr. Burgis is widely recognized as a principled entrepreneur whose ventures and investments have created enormous cultural value. He is Managing Partner of Fourth Wall Ventures, an incubator that he founded to build, train, and invest in people and companies that contribute to a healthy human ecology. He has served on the Board of numerous organizations, including Chairman of the Board of the non-profit The Inscape Center for Personal Vocation, which he co-founded with Dr. Joshua Miller in 2020.
Mr. Burgis is co-author of the book Unrepeatable: Cultivating the Unique Calling of Every Person. He is also a recognized expert in René Girard's mimetic theory and award-winning author of the book Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life (St. Martin's Press, 2021), which has been translated into more than 22 languages and was recognized as a Finacial Times book of the month and the ALEO Reviews book of the year in 2022. He writes weekly on the popular Luke Burgis Newsletter on Substack about the intersection of technology, philosophy, literature, and religion.
Mr. Burgis's next book, The One and the Ninety-Nine: Coercion, Conformity, and the Courage for Truth, will be published by St. Martin's Press in 2026. It will explain the dynamics between individual and groups and how new forces like technology (and specifically, social media and artificial intelligence) are affecting humans' ability to develop a solid sense of sense.
He has written for WIRED magazine, Literary Hub, Aeon, First Things, The New Atlantis, and many other leading publications. His acclaimed essay, "The Three City Problem of Modern Life", led to the formation of the first-annual NOVITATE Conference, which brought together more than 300 people from the metaphorical cities of Athens, Jerusalem, and Silicon Valley on the campus of Catholic University to speak about advancing a civic trialogue in the public sphere around an adequate anthropology.
Mr. Burgis holds a B.S. from the Stern School of Business at New York University, a Certificate in Philosophy from St. John's Seminary in Camarillo, CA, and an S.T.B. in Sacred Theology from the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome.
Inquiries about his availability for speaking, workshops, or consulting engagements should be made on his personal website, lukeburgis.com.
“It’s not enough to know what is good and true. Goodness and truth need to be attractive—in other words, desirable.”