One Wish: Harper Reed ’01

Harper Reed ’01 is an entrepreneur in Chicago, Illinois. He builds speculative companies that combine commerce, technology, and community. He sits on the board of Keeper Security, the Pardee RAND Graduate School, and is very busy. Harper lives in Chicago with his partner, Hiromi Nakazawa ’01, and their child, Yuga. (Photo by Diane Levine.)

When I went to Cornell, it seemed that years like 2025 would never arrive. These years were so far away when I graduated that to imagine them would have been science fiction.

Well, now we are here.

My career has allowed me to spend much time thinking about the future. Over the last decade or so, the future has been getting closer and closer. We don’t have flying cars, but we do have AI, technology, and incredible medical advances. Poverty rates worldwide are declining, hunger is being eradicated (we lost a lot of progress in 2022), and medical advances are saving many lives.

However, one thing has stayed the same since 2001: climate change.

For some reason, many haven’t felt the need to address climate change meaningfully. But the future is coming faster than we realize, so we must act now.

In 2025 I would love to see the world come together around climate change. We have seen unprecedented destabilization due to a changing climate: super storms, water issues, mass migration—all stemming from climate issues. If we don’t act now, these issues will only worsen, leading to more severe storms, water scarcity, and increased displacement.

We need to focus and have cooperation and collaboration. We need policymakers to enact and enforce policies that support environmental sustainability. We need entrepreneurs to build companies that aren’t negatively impactful to the climate. But more than anything, we need to work together to solve some of these thorny issues. We need to start.

That is my dream for 2025.

I want to see people coming together to focus on fixing the climate. Let’s start.

Read all 11 Wishes for 2025 from Cornell visionaries.