Molly Turner

Molly Turner is a leading expert on technology startups and cities. Through her teaching at Berkeley Haas and her work in the field, she has shaped the contemporary conversation about technology’s impacts on urban life and governance. Turner has been on the professional faculty at the Berkeley Haas School of Business for seven years, where she teaches graduate and undergraduate students about urban tech and startup policy strategy. She is a faculty associate of the University of California, Berkeley, Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics, and is on the advisory board of the University of California, Berkeley, Terner Center for Housing Innovation Lab. She currently serves on the board of directors of BRIDGE Housing and served for eight years on the Executive and San Francisco boards of SPUR.

Before teaching at Haas, Turner was an early employee of Airbnb, where she established the company’s public policy team in 2011 and directed its groundbreaking regulatory collaboration with cities. As the Global Head of Civic Partnerships, Turner directed Airbnb’s partnerships with governments around the world, including its Open Homes emergency housing program for survivors and refugees, neighborhood tourism development program, and 2015 launch in Cuba. Before Airbnb, Turner worked for the San Francisco Mayor’s Office of Economic Development, the UNESCO World Heritage Cities Program, and the urban planning consulting firm Dyett and Bhatia. Turner holds a master’s in Urban Planning from Harvard University and a bachelor’s from Dartmouth College.