Russell Hancock

Russell Hancock is president and CEO of Joint Venture Silicon Valley. During his tenure, Joint Venture has become Silicon Valley’s recognized clearing house for regional analysis and for collaborative approaches to solving the region’s problems. He founded the annual State of the Valley conference, a daylong “town hall” discussion among more than 1,500 leaders of the Valley’s challenges and opportunities, and features the release of Joint Venture’s Silicon Valley Index. As the Joint Venture model is replicated in metropolitan regions across the United States, Europe, and Asia, he has provided advice—most recently to governments in Beijing, London, Madrid, the Netherlands, and Taipei. Previously, he was the inaugural director of the Shorenstein Forum for Asia-Pacific Studies at Stanford University. In the mid-1990s, he served as vice president of the Bay Area Council, where he spearheaded the campaign to extend BART to the San Francisco Airport. He also directed a broad-based effort that ultimately created the Bay Area Water Transit Authority, charged with delivering a high-speed ferry system to the San Francisco Bay. He joined the PPIC Statewide Survey Advisory Committee in 2007. He is interviewed regularly by the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg Business Week, the Financial Times, and Forbes. He teaches in Stanford’s Public Policy Program, hosts Inside Silicon Valley, a weekly radio program on 1590 KLIV, and is a frequent guest on NBC Nightly News. He holds a PhD in political science from Stanford University.