About the Author

Professor John Gallaugher has led student learning experiences on five continents. Part of the founding faculty for Boston College’s TechTrek programs, and former co-lead of the school’s graduate field studies in Europe and Asia, Professor Gallaugher has had remarkable access to effectively study technology growth and its impact worldwide. Professor Gallaugher and his students spend several weeks each year visiting technology executives, entrepreneurs, and venture capitalists in San Francisco, Silicon Valley, Seattle, Boston, New York, and Ghana, and are regularly hosted in master-class sessions at firms from Amazon to Zynga. This unique opportunity helps give his teaching and writing a broad, deep, and continually refreshed perspective on key industry trends and developments. He is the author of the award-winning, annually updated textbook Information Systems: A Manager’s Guide to Harnessing Technology, as well as Learn to Program Using Swift for iOS Development, an online book featuring over 100 video lessons that progressively teaches coding and app-building skills to new-to-programming students. Professor Gallaugher’s research has appeared in the Harvard Business Review, MIS Quarterly, and other leading journals. 

Named “Guru to Grads” by Entrepreneur magazine, Gallaugher has also received the Boston College Trzaska Faculty Leadership Award, the all-university Teaching Award, and the student newspaper’s Momentum Award for campus impact. During his time on the leadership team of the Boston College Venture Competition (BCVC), entrepreneurs affiliated with the program gained admittance to elite startup accelerators (Y Combinator, Techstars, MassChallenge, Summer@Highland), launched multiple products, and raised over $100 million in capital. Former students have founded three firms that have achieved unicorn status (valuations above $1 billion). Professor Gallaugher has been a featured speaker at Apple Inc.’s AcademiX educator conference, and was the international keynote speaker at AIBUMA (the Africa International Business and Management Conference) in Nairobi, Kenya. He has consulted for and taught executive seminars for several organizations, including Accenture, Alcoa, Duke Corporate Education, ING, Partners HealthCare, Staples, State Street, the University of Ulster, and the U.S. Information Agency. His comments on business and technology have appeared in the New York Times, National Public Radio, Bloomberg Businessweek, the Boston Globe, Wired, the Associated Press, Chronicle (WCVB-TV), The Daily Yomiuri (Japan), and the Nation (Thailand), among others.

A member of the Information Systems Department at BC’s Carroll School of Management, Professor Gallaugher earned his Ph.D. in Information Systems from the Syracuse University School of Management, and he holds an MBA and an undergraduate degree in computer science, both from Boston College. He shares additional content related to his teaching and research on YouTube at: youtube.com/profgallaugher, at http://gallaugher.com, and is also active on Twitter at @gallaugher.