Chris Clearfield

Chris Clearfield is co-author of Meltdown: Why Our Systems Fail and What We Can Do About It (March 2018). Clearfield began his career as a derivatives trader at Jane Street, a New York-based quantitative trading firm, where he managed the risks that arise when people try to use extremely fast computers to make money. He is the founder of System Logic, a research and consulting firm that helps organizations manage the risk of catastrophic failure. He also worked in Tokyo and Hong Kong, where he developed an appreciation for cultural influences on decision making. He has written about catastrophic failure, technology, and finance for The Guardian, Forbes, Project Syndicate, the Harvard Kennedy School Review, the popular science magazine Nautilus, the Harvard Business Review blog, and in a memo to the U.S. House of Representatives.

Clearfield is a licensed commercial pilot and a graduate of Harvard University, where he studied physics and biology.