Chris Rabb is a writer, consultant, teacher and thought leader on the intersection of entrepreneurship, media, civic engagement and social identity. He is an adjunct professor at Temple University’s Fox School of Business where he teaches social entrepreneurship and organizational innovation and is an affiliated faculty member of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Institute. He serves on the national board on America’s leading racial justice think tank, Race Forward, the Centre for Racial Justic Innovation.
A graduate of Yale College, Chris worked in the U.S. Senate as a legislative aide and as a writer, researcher, and trainer for the White House Conference on Small Business. He has worked on entrepreneurship from various vantage points, including co-founding a technology-based product design firm in Chicago, and running a nationally recognized business incubator in West Philadelphia. Chris also served as a board member for ten years for a family-owned newspaper business in Baltimore founded by his great-great grandfather over 120 years ago.
Chris is the author of the groundbreaking book, Invisible Capital: How Unseen Forces Shape Entrepreneurial Opportunity, which explores the landscape of modern U.S. business in the context of structural inequality. Released in 2010 by Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Rabb’s book explores the hidden factors that influence business viability when hard work, a great idea, and a good attitude are simply not enough. It also lays out how, through development of commonwealth enterprises, our society can further democratize entrepreneurial opportunity towards greater social inclusion, economic sustainability and community wealth-building. A 2013 Knight Foundation BMe Leadership Award recipient, Chris received a grant to continue his entrepreneurial literacy outreach to individuals and groups working in low financial wealth communities in Philadelphia, Detroit, and Baltimore in furtherance of social enterprise development that protects and grows community wealth.
Chris is an accomplished genealogist and gifted story-teller, and has been covered widely on radio, TV and print for his ground-breaking work on connecting genetic testing and family history, tracing eleven distinct ancestral lines from West Africa, to Pakistan to the blue-blooded, slave-trading Livingston aristocracy of New York.
Chris seamlessly incorporates his unique humor and eclectic experiences into his media appearances, interactive presentations, speeches and writings. He also uses these well-honed skills in his capacity as a professional facilitator who works on organizational change, often times with large-scale, corporate clients.
He has been featured extensively in, and written for, a number of prominent publications including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Huffington Post, The Chicago Tribune, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Philadelphia Daily News, The Nation, Mother Jones, Black Enterprise, Colorlines.com, and The European Business Review.
Chris has appeared frequently on TV and radio as a political commentator and was among the first cadre of bloggers to receive press credentials to cover the Democratic and Republican national conventions in 2004. In February 2010, Chris hosted a 30-minute documentary TV show produced by the Applied Research Center (now called Race Forward) entitled: ColorLines: Race and Economic Recovery, which aired nationally on LinkTV. He has also appeared on MSNBC’s “Up w/ Chris Hayes” and “Your Business” with host JJ Ramberg.
Chris is a former fellow with Demos, the Poynter Institute and the German Marshall Fund of the United States, and was a visiting researcher at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School for Public and International Affairs.
A native of Chicago, Chris lives with his sons in the Mt. Airy neighborhood of Philadelphia.
