KEVIN Adler

Kevin F. Adler is an entrepreneur and sociologist who never learned the word stranger, and is dedicated to a world where everyone is seen as invaluable and interconnected.

Kevin is a TED Resident and the founder and CEO of Miracle Messages, a nonprofit that ends homelessness by rebuilding social support systems. Miracle Messages has been featured widely, including the New York Times, NPR, People, and NowThis, whose video hit 26M views. Their goal is to reunite 1 million people by 2021.

Previously, Kevin co-founded three edtech startups: alumn.us (a fundraising platform for underserved schools, acquired in 2013), Entangled Ventures (an edtech incubator), and BetterGrads (an online mentoring nonprofit). From 2010-11, Kevin served as an Ambassador of Goodwill in Mexico for Rotary International.

Kevin is the author of Natural Disasters as a Catalyst for Social Capital (Rowman & Littlefield, 2015), a ground-breaking book that demonstrates the role of shared traumas in either bringing communities together or tearing them apart. His writing has been published in the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Christian Science Monitor, TechCrunch, Cedar Rapids Gazette, and two edited volumes.

Kevin holds an M.Phil in Sociology from Cambridge University, and a B.A. in Politics from Occidental College, where he was the Culley Award recipient as the top graduating senior and where President Barack Obama's "favorite professor" said, "in 40 years of teaching, Kevin is the single best student I have ever had." In 2015, he was one of 80 people selected from 5000 applicants to attend Singularity University's Global Solutions Program at NASA, where he studied how exponential technologies can solve humanity’s grand challenges.

Kevin has delivered keynotes or featured talks at TED, Stanford, Microsoft, Singularity University, the Public Affairs Conference, and Zappos. He is a MassChallenge finalist, New Leaders Council fellow, StartingBloc fellow, member of Sandbox, Nexus Summit delegate, and founding trustee of the Awesome Foundation-SF.

Kevin grew up in Livermore, CA, and is currently based in San Francisco and Boston.