Parker Conrad

Parker Conrad (born 1980) is an American entrepreneur. He has co-founded three startup companies: SigFig, Zenefits and Rippling. He is the former CEO of both SigFig and Zenefits, and is the CEO of Rippling, a cloud-based human resources platform. Parker Conrad was born in 1980 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. Growing up on the Upper East Side, Parker Conrad 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. Despite this, Parker admits that his high school grades were generally mediocre. In the fall of 1998, Conrad began studying at Harvard University, where he was managing editor of The Harvard Crimson. Conrad cites his time at the paper as a stressful period where, due to the time demands of the paper, he didn't go to many classes and failed out of school, an experience he describes as "humiliating and shocking". Forced to take a leave of absence, he spent a year working for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette before returning to Harvard.