{"id":1834,"date":"2026-08-10T05:53:50","date_gmt":"2026-08-10T09:53:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kinsta-stag-advertisingweek.md-staging.com\/awnewyork-2026\/speakers\/james-slezak\/"},"modified":"2026-08-10T05:53:50","modified_gmt":"2026-08-10T09:53:50","slug":"james-slezak","status":"publish","type":"sb_speaker","link":"https:\/\/kinsta-stag-advertisingweek.md-staging.com\/awnewyork-2026\/speakers\/james-slezak\/4513\/","title":{"rendered":"James Slezak"},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

James is founder and chief executive of Swayable, a startup that measures how content persuades. Swayable is backed by investors including Y Combinator and Sequoia. He was previously Vice President […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"template":"","class_list":["post-1834","sb_speaker","type-sb_speaker","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nJames Slezak<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"James is founder and chief executive of Swayable, a startup that measures how content persuades. Swayable is backed by investors including Y Combinator and Sequoia. He was previously Vice President and Chief of Operations of NYT Global, the international digital team of The New York Times, founding partner at social change agency Purpose, a strategy consultant at McKinsey, and co-founded Peers.org, working with the founders of Airbnb. James originally moved to the U.S. from Australia to earn a PhD in experimental physics at Cornell, where he published discoveries in journals including PNAS, Science, Nature and Physical Review, while also studying economics under Kaushik Basu, later the Chief Economist of the World Bank. His passion for social advocacy led him to start Swayable, which initially focused on advocacy campaigns before branching out into brands.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"James Slezak\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"James is founder and chief executive of Swayable, a startup that measures how content persuades. Swayable is backed by investors including Y Combinator and Sequoia. 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