The Raymond J. Harbert College of Business will host Etsy product manager, entrepreneur, Amazon best-selling author and blogger Jason Shen for an open campus lecture on Wednesday, April 20, from 6 to 7 p.m. in Lowder 113-A.

The event is free and open to the campus community. Shen will discuss strategies for remaining relevant in a highly competitive business world in which attention, funding and resources are directed to the best people, products and ideas.

Shen, a White House Presidential Innovation Fellow, is the author of the Amazon best-seller How to Get What You Want: A Short Primer for Ambitious People and discusses business, technology and behavior change on his blog, The Art of Ass-Kicking. In his current role with Etsy, Shen helps the e-commerce giant build products that support and grow the network’s global  marketplace of more than 1.6 million active sellers. The company, which specializes in handmade and vintage items, reported more than $2.39 billion in gross merchandise sales in 2015. 

Shen previously worked for Percolate, a global software marketing organization, and co-founded the San Francisco-based technology company Ridejoy, which earned funding from Y Combinator in summer 2011 and raised more than $1.3 million in venture capital. 

Shen earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Stanford University, where he was a captain of the school’s NCAA Championship-winning men’s gymnastics team. He also earned a Guinness World Record in 2014, completing 50 Aztec push-ups in one minute.