About Academic Innovators

W. Joseph King

W. Joseph King is a founder and principal of Academic Innovators and is the 18th president of Lyon College.

Before joining Lyon, King served as senior advisor to the president of Emory & Henry College. As executive director of the National Institute for Technology in Liberal Education, he helped almost 140 liberal arts colleges integrate inquiry, pedagogy, and technology to become more strategic and innovative. Similarly, as vice president of innovation at Southwestern University, he focused on strategic opportunities. As executive director of Connexions at Rice University, he led the first large-scale open education initiative.

King has worked directly with dozens of colleges and universities to help them envision new possibilities, define strategies, and implement changes. Projects have ranged from envisioning pedagogical changes over the next twenty years to organizing new consortia for increased efficiency, breadth, and depth. He has also focused on new business models and strategic finance in a tumultuous period for higher education.

King is co-author, together with Brian Mitchell, of How to Run a College from Johns Hopkins University Press. Their second book, The Creative Generation, is forthcoming from Stanford University Press.

King served as the entrepreneur-in-residence at Tech Fort Worth. He also served as an adjunct professor at the TCU Neeley School of Business where he was a finalist for Most Inspiring Professor. Formerly, he was a research scientist at the Human Interface Technology Laboratory at the University of Washington. He has also conducted research at the Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute and Hughes Research Laboratories. King has served as a consultant and advisor to Hanson Robotics, Microsoft, Interval Research, Walt Disney Imagineering, and Atari Games.

In addition to his work in higher education, King is a serial entrepreneur. He is a co-founder of Grifiti.  He was president of Zama Networks. He was also chief scientist of F5 Networks. He served as the 2007 entrepreneur-in-residence at Tech Fort Worth.

King serves as chairman of the board of Teachers Without Borders as well as on the board of directors of the Council on Library and Information Resources and the board of advisors of Stanford University Libraries. Formerly, he served on the boards of Anvil Academic Publishing, Connexions, Rice University Press, Fossil Rim Wildlife Center, Southwestern University, Benaroya Research Institute, and the Pacific Northwest Ballet.

King holds a Ph.D. in human-computer interaction from the University of Washington. He holds a B.A. with honors in computer science and in experimental psychology from Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas.