Andre Bierzynski

My career began in a research lab at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, with a physics degree and a habit I have never lost: understanding how a system actually works before trying to change it. Physics teaches you to reason from first principles. Everything since has been that same instinct pointed at a bigger canvas.

I widened the lens through a master's in finance and international development, and six months studying at Peking University that turned an academic interest in the wider world into a personal one. Then I learned to build. At Deloitte, I led transformation work for federal agencies, from military health to the Air Force to the Postal Service, that delivered more than two hundred million dollars in savings, always using human-centered design so the solutions fit the people who had to live with them.

At AARP I moved from strategy into creating things from zero to one, launching a digital health platform that reached hundreds of thousands of older adults and caregivers, and building and managing a forty-five-company investment portfolio in the age-technology space. That work was recognized with a 40 Under 40 award from The Network Journal.

Today, at Capital One, I lead innovation and digital product across a multi-billion-dollar community impact and community finance portfolio, using generative AI to expand who gets served, inside one of the most heavily regulated environments there is. Different sector, same instinct: take a hard, human problem and make it work for the people it is for.

Across all of it, one thing holds. Technology is the tool. The person on the other end is the point.

The difference between technology that helps and technology that hurts is not the code. It is governance.

Credentials

A physicist and public-policy graduate of American University, with executive education at UC Berkeley in machine learning product management, leadership training at Georgetown through the ADEPt programme, and a diploma in diplomacy and international studies from Peking University.

Off the clock

Most Saturdays you will find me on a youth soccer sideline, coaching, which is honestly the best part of my week, and a full-circle kind of joy for someone who grew up a competitive tennis player. Away from work I am happiest with my family, a good novel, a video game, or a match on in the background while I pretend to read. I also serve on the board of a local child development center.