Roland Fryer

Awarded the Mac Arthur Foundation Genius Award, Professor Roland Fryer has briskly established himself as an importantplayer in the field of economics. Not only was Fryer named a "Rising Star" by Fortune magazine and featured in Esquire’s "Genius Issue," but his own work has been profiled in The New York Times,Washington Post, and the Boston Globe. A collaborator on the Bestselling Book Freakonomics, Roland Fryer has received praise from an array of sponsors – from Universities and Lecture Series to Insurance and Financial groups – for his seasoned and engaging perspective on an array of economic issues facing the nation.

Roland Fryer is Robert M. Beren Professor of Economics at Harvard University. In addition to being affiliated with Harvard University he maintains offices at the National Bureau of Economic Research and the DuBois Institute. In January 2008, at age 30, he became the youngest African-American to ever receive tenure at Harvard.

Fryer is widely regarded to be one of Harvard's rising stars, having published numerous economics-related papers in prominent academic journals over the past few years. The New York Times ran an extensive profile of Fryer, entitled "Toward a Unified Theory of Black America," in March of 2005. This portrait etched out the extensive struggles of Fryer's childhood, where he was exposed to drugs, crime and parental abandonment. Despite his birth into a life of poverty Mr. Fryer received an athletic scholarship to the University of Texas at Arlington and graduated in a mere 2.5 years. He then pursued his Ph.D. in economics from Penn State. In recent years, Fryer has noted that his rise to success happened “through the medium of education and through the idea of the mind.” Upon completing a three year fellowship with the Harvard Society of Fellows at the end of the 2005-2006 academic year, Fryer joined Harvard's Economics Department as an assistant professor. In 2005, Fryer was also selected as one of the first Fletcher Foundation Fellows. Recently, Roland Fryer has begun work on the Opportunity NYC Project, which will study how students in low-performing schools respond to financial incentives.

Many recognize Roland Fryer’s name from the Internationally Bestselling Book Freakonomics, written by superstar economist Steven Levitt and journalist Stephen Dubner. Some of Freakonomics’ most resonating chapters were ones in which Roland Fryer and Steven Levitt collaborated. Mr. Fryer and the Freakonomics team debunked several of society’s racial mores.Roland Fryer's speeches are delivered with insight, passion, energy and all without a single note. Clients have always sent high praise after his presentations.