Parker Conrad

Parker Conrad (born 1980) was the CEO of Zenefits, a cloud-based human resources platform designed to assist with onboarding, payroll, benefits, and vacation tracking.
Early life

Conrad was born in New York City to Ellen Rouse Conrad, a president and founder of the non-profit environmental group the Bedford 2020 Coalition, and Winthrop B. Conrad, Jr., a now retired senior partner at the New York law firm Davis Polk & Wardwell.[1] He attended the prestigious Upper West Side preparatory school The Collegiate School, and spent nearly two years during high school studying the neurobiology of sea snails. This research ultimately won him $20,000 and third place nationally in the Westinghouse Talent Search.[2] Despite this early display of an evident talent for science, Parker admits that his high school grades were generally mediocre.[3]

In the fall of 1998 Conrad began studying at Harvard University, where he served as managing editor of The Harvard Crimson.[4] Conrad cites his time at the paper as an incredibly stressful period that ultimately led to his taking a leave of absence from school. “I was spending all my time at the Crimson, like 70 hours a week and I didn’t go to class for like a year,” he told Business Insider in February 2015. “But then I failed out of school. I had to leave Harvard, really halfway through my tenure as the Crimson managing editor. It was this incredibly humiliating and shocking experience.” However, Conrad returned to finish his studies one year later, and graduated in 2003 with an AB degree in Chemistry.[5]

Conrad was diagnosed, treated and cleared of testicular cancer at the age of 24.