Innovation · Strategy · Social Impact
Andre Bierzynski
Two decades turning hard problems into things that work.
For nearly two decades I have worked at the meeting point of technology, strategy, and social impact. It started in a research lab at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, learning to understand systems from the ground up, and it runs through public policy and the AI-enabled products I build today. The tools keep changing. The starting point never does: the person on the other end.
A few things I have built
From an idea to hundreds of thousands
I took a digital health platform, Let's Be Well, from concept to hundreds of thousands of older adults and caregivers in under a year.
An innovation portfolio, built and judged
I built and ran a forty-five-company venture portfolio, deciding with evidence what to back and what to let go.
Building with AI
I lead how my teams use AI: to build software faster, and to create products we could not have built before, all in service of social impact. The hard part is judgment, pointing AI at the problems that truly matter rather than at everything.
On stage · 2026
The Judgment in the Room
Keynote · Conference of Directors of Public Sector Entities · Grenada
A keynote for the directors who govern a nation's public institutions, on a single idea: when the machines get smarter, human judgment matters more, not less.
About
How I got here
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.
Ideas & Speaking
What I think about, out loud
Featured keynote · 2026
The Judgment in the Room
Conference of Directors of Public Sector Entities · Grenada
A keynote delivered to the directors who govern a nation's public institutions. Drawing on real cases, from the region's own hard-won resilience to the ways governments worldwide have used AI to serve citizens brilliantly and to harm them badly, it makes one argument: the more capable these systems become, the more the one thing they cannot do, take responsibility and exercise judgment, matters. Directors are the human in the loop for the institutions a country depends on.
"The more these tools can do, the more the one thing they cannot do matters."
Speaking & appearances
Writing & press
Topics I speak on
Contact
I am always glad to talk, whether it is a talk you would like me to give, an idea worth chasing, or a hard problem you are trying to solve. If any of that is on your mind, I would genuinely love to hear from you.