Title
Chairman, Board of Advisors
Company
swytch.io
Bio
Hirshberg has been at the forefront of innovation and disruptive change in emerging media and technology for more than 25 years. He's passionate about the intersection of technology and civic engagement and has been instrumental in creating two centers of urban innovation from scratch. Chairman, City Innovate Foundation, an organization formed with The San Francisco Mayor’s office, UC Berkeley and the MIT Media Lab to promote a network of global civic innovation centers. Chairman and Co-founder of San Francisco’s Gray Area Art and Technology Theater, one of San Francisco's most vibrant and civic-minded arts organizations, a center for digital media education, incubation, performance and exhibition. He is co-author of the best selling book “Maker City”, which examines economic development and the many experiments that are defining the renewal of America’s Cities. (You can purchase it on Amazon here: https://www.amazon.com/Maker-City-Practical-Reinventing-American/dp/1680452630). He is founder of the Maker City Project, which helps brands connect with cities for community engagement and for tangible results in corporate responsibility. He comes to this work after 15 years at the helm of the Re:Imagine Consulting Group, helping brands with strategy and marketing in a world of empowered connected audiences. He’s worked with executive teams at Best Buy, Sony, IBM, Verizon, Time Warner, Unilever, GE, Estee Lauder, Telefonica and many others on digital and growth strategies. Previously, Hirshberg was Chairman of Technorati, the pioneering social media search engine and advertising network with over a billion monthly page views. During a nine-year tenure at Apple Computer, Hirshberg headed Enterprise Marketing, where he grew Apple's large business and government revenue to $1 billion annually. Peter is a sought after technology and innovation speaker, having presented at TED, the World Economic Forum, DLD, The Aspen Ideas Festival, E.G.,Techonomy, CeBIT, WEB 2.0 Summit, and many other events. His board and advisor positions have included Active Video Networks, Technorati, Build Public, The Computer History Museum, & Gray Area Foundation for the Arts. He is a Senior Fellow at the USC Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership and Policy and a Henry Crown fellow of the Aspen Institute.