Noah Zandan

Noah Zandan is co-founder and CEO of Quantified, which applies data science to how leaders communicate. He grew up in Austin, Texas, where his father, Peter Zandan, started Intelliquest Information Group in the family living room, according to Forbes.

Two Years on Wall Street

He studied econometrics at Dartmouth and in 2005 went to Wall Street, working for Lehman Brothers and Deutsche Bank. Executives' communication, he saw, was a critical success factor in $1 billion decisions, "but there was no data behind it, and I'm an econ guy," he told Knowledge at Wharton.

Finding the Research at Kellogg

He left private equity for an MBA at Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management to dig into the problem, and found researchers such as James Pennebaker at the University of Texas who had been measuring communication for years. His father, who holds a PhD in evaluation research, joined as co-founder, and they built a database of presidential speeches, TED talks and media interviews.