John C. Mulliken

Strategy consultant, former CTO & CPO, public & private company board member, retail & climatetech entrepreneur, early stage investor.  Father of two, husband, sailor, hiker, and aspirational road biker.

John is a senior lecturer in the Strategy unit at Harvard Business School, an affiliate of HBS' Business and Environment Initiative, and a Faculty Associate of the Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability.  He teaches in the first year MBA Strategy course. He studies climate strategy, climate finance, and building climate technology ventures, and has co-taught a lab course on Risks, Opportunities and Investments in the Era of Climate Change. 

John is a Senior Advisor at The Boston Consulting Group, where he advises clients on topics in retail, technology, and climate.  He also sits on several boards, including URBN (Urban Outfitters, Inc.) and Bombas.  Before he joined the faculty at HBS, John was the Chief Technology Officer at Wayfair where he spent a decade on the executive team, building the company alongside the founders from $200m to $11b, an IPO.  While there he started and scaled teams in multiple functions during periods of hyper-growth, including leading multiple technical and product launches.  He led the initial development of the strategy that Wayfair followed for a decade, led the development and scaling of the international business & supply chain, launched multiple sub-brands, and held key roles in merchandising, supply chain, and marketing.  He was also the Head of Global Carbon Markets and Chief Intergrated Product Officer at Indigo Ag, a leading regenerative agriculture climate-tech company which is the largest carbon farming program by acres enrolled worldwide and was the first to produce verified, registry-issued agricultural carbon credits at scale. Early in his career he was a consultant at the Boston Consulting Group, where he spent seven years working on topics in retail, consumer goods, and healthcare.  At BCG he focused on innovation where he was a founding member of the Global Center on Consumer Research and a co-founder of the Multi-Channel Retail topic.

John is an active participant in climate and emissions policy, through his work on the Carbon Zero Project, a non-profit that catalyzes projects in efficient and effective emissions management tools and policies.  The CZP helps foster resources for partner organizations to drive more rapid development of governmental tools & mechanisms to drive an effective, efficient and just climate transition.  He is an early-stage investor in climate tech companies, and advises several on approaches to scaling, go-to-market, and de-risking technology and commercial strategies.   He also helps boards develop effective approaches to ensuring the effectiveness of climate strategies and has written on key approaches and pitfalls to developing climate strategy.

John received an MBA with distinction from the London Business School in corporate finance, and a BA in mathematics from Reed College.