Jerry Michalski is the founder and president of Sociate, a technology consulting firm. For the five years before he founded Sociate, Jerry was the managing editor of Release 1.0, Esther Dyson’s monthly newsletter, and co-host of the annual PC Forum. Previously, Jerry was an industry analyst and research service director with New Science Associates. Jerry earned an MBA from the Wharton School and a BA in Economics from UC Irvine.

In the middle of his dozen years as a tech-industry trends analyst, Jerry realized that the word “consumer” made him itchy. Paying attention to that itch for two decades turned into a series of insights that revolve around trust, particularly how “consumerization” broke our trust in humans and how disparate groups around the world are rebuilding it now. In 2010, Jerry started a think-and-do tank called REX, the Relationship Economy eXpedition, which convenes change agents to explore these ideas about trust. Long ago, Jerry was a freight rate analyst (Mobil Oil), fake hippo shooter (on the Jungle Cruise at Disneyland) and corporate strategy consultant. He was raised in South America, speaks Spanish and German fluently and publishes his Brain openly online.