Faculty Directory | Isaac Oates

Isaac Oates is an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Business and Society Program at NYU Stern, where he teaches Personal Responsibility and Leadership. He is the founder and former CEO of Justworks, a workplace platform he built and scaled to serve more than 12,000 small businesses and their 180,000 employees before transitioning to the role of Executive Chair. A Henry Crown Fellow of the Aspen Institute, he is drawn to questions of values-driven leadership and the obligations that come with building and stewarding organizations.

Isaac is also a doctoral student in Political Science (Comparative Public Policy) at the CUNY Graduate Center, where he is a Graduate Center Fellow and a doctoral fellow at the Howard J. Samuels State and City Policy Center. His research examines urban politics, public policy, and sub-municipal governance in New York and Paris. He founded the Project for Livable Streets, a joint research initiative of the Center for an Urban Future and Tech:NYC, and serves on the boards of Open Plans and Tech:NYC. Earlier in his career he held leadership roles at Etsy and Amazon and served as an officer in the U.S. military.