Emily Harburg, Ph.D.'s Linkedin Analytics

Dr. Emily Harburg is passionate about building technology that fosters connection, support, and motivation. She is the CEO and co-founder of PairUp, a B2B SaaS platform that connects and supports employees while reducing key person risk. PairUp uses AI to retain and transfer knowledge, streamlining onboarding, offboarding, and access to critical expertise. Emily’s background spans industry, startups, and academia. She has worked at Walt Disney Imagineering where she designed technology for the Disney theme parks, at Facebook (Meta) where she worked as a UX researcher, and at EF Education First where she led the Emerging Tech and Innovation team designing tech to support millions of students around the world. In 2015, Emily co-founded Brave Initiatives, an organization dedicated to helping women build tech skills and confidence in coding for social impact. She also co-founded Youth Lead the Change, a global youth leadership program for high school students, in partnership with Harvard University. Emily’s academic research lies at the intersection of technology and social behavior, and the role that technology can play in building self-efficacy and confidence. Her research has been published and shared in global conferences, academic journals, case studies, and news publications -- including the Harvard Business Review, TEDx, Computer Human Interaction (CHI), CNN, and more. Emily graduated with a B.A. in Social Anthropology and Psychology from Harvard College, and with a Ph.D. in Technology and Social Behavior from Northwestern University. In her free time she enjoys hiking, skiing, photography, playing volleyball, and gathering for Thoughtlucks.