Rob Lalka is the Albert R. Lepage Professor in Business at Tulane University’s Freeman School of Business and the Executive Director of the Albert Lepage Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. He has received the A.B. Freeman School’s Excellence in Intellectual Contributions Award three times, most recently for the critically acclaimed new book, The Venture Alchemists: How Big Tech Turned Profits Into Power, from Columbia University Press, which was one of the 22 best business books of 2024 according to the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing. Kirkus Reviews called it “An impressive work of research and intellectual reflection," adding this praise: “The body of work addressing this subject now seems inexhaustible, but this book must count as among its most clear-eyed, well researched, and morally uncompromising examples.”