Printable Biography of Alexander Blass

Educated at Oxford University and Wharton, Alexander Blass, 34, is the American son of a Hungarian-born Holocaust survivor who instilled in him the importance of making a difference and the sanctity of human life from an early age. This greatly influenced Mr. Blass, who is a well-known, multiple award-winning CEO and sought after inspirational, motivational speaker, helping others to succeed by sharing his passion, vision, and fascinating experiences. He is an expert in innovation, technology strategy, philanthropy, fundraising, marketing, and finance. He is the CEO, founder and inventor of RealityCharity, the world’s first direct, person-to-person giving website and philanthropy community.

Praised as the person who “revolutionized charitable giving" by the Daily Record, and for inventing the “eBay of Giving” (Mercury News) and “Facebook Meets Pocketbook” (The Sun), Mr. Blass has received numerous awards. He is the youngest winner of both the Daily Record’s prestigious Top Innovator of the Year Award and the Influential Marylanders Award (top 50 people in the entire state). He also won the Top 40 Under 40 CEOs Award by the Baltimore Business Journal
and the international WebAward for Outstanding Achievement by the WMA. Mr. Blass has also been honored as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the Wharton School of Business.

Mr. Blass is interviewed regularly by the media & has been quoted in hundreds of print, radio, television and web media outlets around the world including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Associated Press, The Guardian (UK), The Independent (UK), Newstalk (Ireland), Melbourne Age (Australia), Businessweek.com, Forbes.com, San Francisco Chronicle, The Sun, International Herald Tribune, Jerusalem Post, Washington Post, Toronto Globe and Mail, MSNBC, FOX News, CBS Radio, Jewish Times, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, the Examiner, and numerous others. Since its launch, RealityCharity—whose unique technology is patent-pending—continues to change countless lives around the world. It has hosted over 1500 fundraising campaigns, received over 10 million hits, and gained worldwide attention when the launch story was covered by the Associated Press on its very first day.

Prior to founding RealityCharity, Mr. Blass led successful careers as a venture capitalist, investment banker, management consultant, and software developer.

On a dozen occasions, Mr. Blass has been honored by serving as an invited expert on investment panels at the National Science Foundation in Virginia. Buoyed by a lifetime passion for technology and entrepreneurship, he launched his first company as a teenager, an online computer equipment reseller, prior to the existence of the World Wide Web.

Mr. Blass has visited nearly 40 countries to date in the Americas, Europe, Africa, Middle East and Asia. He serves on the board of directors of multiple non-profits including the Ghana-based Woyome Foundation for Africa, which combats HIV/AIDS. A proud first generation American, Mr. Blass is a native of Baltimore, Maryland, USA, and is a member of AllGenerations, a non-profit worldwide support network for Holocaust survivors and their children.

Mr. Blass holds a Master of Science degree in electrical engineering from the University of Pennsylvania, where he also studied at the Wharton School and conducted research in emerging technologies under Internet pioneer Dr. David Farber. He attended business school at Oxford University in England, where he received an MBA and rowed for his college team.