2022 speakers

Emily Hostage is Director of Industry Relations at Columbia University. She leads the Industry Relations Group (IRG) initiative at Columbia, a newly established team focused on developing significant, lasting, and often multi-disciplinary collaborative partnerships with industry on the cutting edge of university innovation and scholarship. IRG supports Columbia’s university-wide industry relations strategy.

IRG is part of Columbia Technology Ventures (CTV), Columbia’s tech transfer office and the central location for many of Columbia’s technology development initiatives like start-up formation, accelerators, and intellectual property licensing. IRG and CTV work closely together on industry partnerships that include and often stretch beyond the bounds of traditional tech transfer.

Emily’s career to date has focused on technology and innovation through different professional lenses. Prior to Columbia, she was Senior Vice President and Head of Special Projects at Burford Capital, a $5 billion investment firm focused on legal finance. She oversaw Burford’s pipeline of investment opportunities in technology and intellectual property, pioneering Burford’s work with universities and with venture-backed tech companies. Before Burford, Emily was Vice President of Analytics and Policy Counsel at RPX Corporation, where she oversaw RPX’s proprietary data collections and data analysis for corporate clients, government policymakers, universities, and the general public. Before RPX Emily practiced law, both at a law firm (Arnold & Porter LLP) and in-house at a venture-backed solar technology company (Alta Devices, Inc.).
 
Emily earned her J.D. cum laude from Harvard Law School, and her B.S. summa cum laude and her M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Boston University. In law school she served as Executive Director of the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau, a student-run legal services firm and clinical program founded in 1913. Her Master’s research in engineering focused on the use of electromyography sensors to study control properties in the human nervous system.