Biz Stone

Wellesley High School Author: Biz Stone (1992)

            Biz Stone’s post-WHS awards included, in the same year, being named both one of Time Magazine’s “100 Most Influential People in the World,” and GQ’s “Nerd of the Year.”  Other awards in his massive list include:  an Emmy Award; Inc. Magazine’s Entrepreneur of the Decade; the International Center for Journalist’s Innovation Award; and The Economist’s Innovation Award. 

            All of this grew out of an idea Biz had with his friend Jack Dorsey, while Biz was working in the IT department at Wellesley College.  The company they founded — Twitter — soon changed how the world communicates. 

            After Twitter, Biz put his unique spin on various other parts of our lives: founding technology companies such as the search engine Jelly (where he was also CEO); serving as creative director at Xanga; being an angel investor and advisor for companies such as Nest, Pinterest, Square, and Slack; and becoming an active philanthropist for health, education, environmentalism, and animal rights. 

            Biz returned to Wellesley to receive an Honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Babson, and even fulfilled a childhood dream by directing a film, with Ron Howard. 

            For years he has written a blog, and has published articles for Medium, The Atlantic, and The Times.  His books are: Things a Little Bird Told Me:  Confessions of the Creative Mind; Blogging:  Genius Strategies for Instant Web Content; and Who Let the Blogs Out.