Tyler Cowen

Tyler Cowen is an economics professor and the Faculty Director of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. He also serves as the administrator of Emergent Ventures, a fellowship and grant program that has funded more than 1,000 early-stage entrepreneurs and thinkers since 2018. Maintaining an approximate 10 percent acceptance rate, the program provides capital for scalable projects across sectors like biotechnology and policy, backing initiatives such as one of the first COVID-19 saliva tests and a prison reform startup that identified over 150,000 candidates for early release. Beyond his philanthropic work, Cowen is a public intellectual who contributes daily to the Marginal Revolution blog and writes for The Free Press. Recently named to the 2025 TIME100 Philanthropy List, his current focus remains on identifying and supporting undiscovered global talent working on transformative, zero-to-one ideas.