Zia Chishti | |
|---|---|
| Born | Wilson Lear 1971 (age 53–54) |
| Alma mater | Lahore American School Columbia University Stanford University |
| Occupation | Business executive |
| Known for | Orthoclear,Afiniti |
| Spouse | |
| Partner(s) | Tatiana Spottiswoode (c. 2017) |
| Awards | Sitara-e-Imtiaz for IT (2018) |
Muhammad Ziaullah Khan Chishti (né Wilson Lear; born 1971) is aPakistani-American investor and business executive. He is the founder ofAfiniti,TRG Global, and co-founder ofAlign Technology.[1][2][3]
After starting his career as aMorgan Stanley investment banker, Chishti invented the medical deviceInvisalign and co-foundedAlign Technology to market the product[4] in 1997.[5] He was CEO of Align until 2003, when he founded the investment fund The Resource Group.[6] In 2005 he co-founded bothOrthoclear[5] andAfiniti, the latter of which developsartificial intelligence for use in customer call centers.[7] Chishti was a named inventor on around 150 issued patents by 2018,[citation needed] and had co-founded threeunicorn startup companies.[8] In 2021, he resigned after accusations ofsexual harassment and violence in his career were made public.
Zia Chishti was born as Wilson Lear in 1971[4] inBar Harbor, Maine.[9] His father, George Lear, was an American while his mother was Pakistani. After his father's suicide in 1974,[4] he and his mother moved toLahore, Pakistan.[1] At that time, his name was legally changed to Zia Chishti to avoidanti-Christian sentiment in Pakistan at that time.[4] After graduating from theLahore American School,[4] his mother sent him back to his American roots. In 1988 he moved to New York City[7] to begin attendingColumbia University, where he earned a BA incomputer science andeconomics[6] in 1992.[9]
Chishti subsequently became an investment banker atMorgan Stanley, working in New York and London[4] onmergers and acquisitions.[7] He also worked forMcKinsey & Company[6] as a management consultant in London.[10] In 1997[9] he graduated fromStanford University in California with anMBA.[6]
Undergoing a course oforthodontic treatment in his early twenties, Chishti envisioned clear plastic appliances instead of metal braces.[7] Working on the project in his dorm room at Stanford University,[citation needed] his invention,Invisalign, allowed computers to customize plastic retainers to gradually shift patient's teeth.[11] As founding CEO and chairman,[12] in 1997 he co-founded the medical device companyAlign Technology inSunnyvale, California.[11] TheFood and Drug Administration granted Align Technology approval to sell and market Invisalign in 1998.[5] Chishti secured funding fromKleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers, and the company had raised around $140 million in venture capital by 2000. Align Technology listed on theNASDAQ in January 2001 with a valuation of $1 billion. Chishti left Align Technology in 2003[4] and sold his shares in the company.[13]
After leaving Align Technology,[13] Chishti became the founding chairman and CEO of The Resource Group (TRG).[6] As his first acquisition with TRG, he purchased the Pakistani operations of Align Technology[4] in Lahore, which Align had shed in 2001. Chishti "took the abandoned office filled with laid-off workers and asked them to trust his vision for a call-center empire."[13] Chishti listed TRG on theKarachi Stock Exchange in July 2003.[4] By 2005, the company had operations in Karachi and Lahore and was supporting and acquiring American call centers.[13]
In 2005, Chishti and several former Align Technology employees founded the medical device companyOrthoclear.[5] The company settled a patent infringement lawsuit filed by Align in 2006, with Align purchasing Orthoclear's intellectual property for $20 million. Chishti subsequently returned his attention to TRG.[4]
In 2005 Chishti foundedAfiniti in Washington, D.C.,[4] with TRG holding approximately half of the startup's stock.[14] As CEO and chairman,[7] Chishti wrote the first draft of Afiniti's software on his dining room table in 2006.[citation needed] The product usesartificial intelligence to help companies increase call center efficiency.[2] Afiniti had a valuation of $1.6 billion by 2017 and was considered aunicorn, which are companies valued at over $1 billion. Chishti continued as Afiniti's CEO[12] and chairman of the board,[3] which also included directors such asJohn W. Snow andJosé Maria Aznar.[12]
By 2017, The Resource Group was operating as an equity vehicle[7] with a number of subsidiaries, for example the offshore company TRG International.[2] It primarily invested in "business process outsourcing (BPO) and related technology companies," according to Chishti.[7] He was awarded theSitara-e-Imtiaz Award for IT by Pakistani PresidentMamnoon Hussain in March 2018.[15] That April, Chishti was also a recipient of theMIT AI Innovator Award.[citation needed]
Chishti has been a critic of the "hype" surroundingartificial intelligence, arguing in 2018 that society is headed for anotherAI winter.[16] He has stated that the benefits of artificial intelligence are evolutionary, rather than revolutionary,[17] and current successful use cases of the technology revolve around the identification of patterns within complex data, including medical image anomaly detection, hydrocarbon detection, consumer behavioral predication and fraud detection.[16][17]
On November 16, 2021, a former female employee of Afiniti, Tatiana Spottiswoode, testified in front of theUnited States House Committee on the Judiciary that after months of sexual harassment, Chishti sexually assaulted and beat her while they were traveling together on a business trip to Brazil in 2017. It was also alleged that he grabbed her buttocks in front of coworkers, and called her a "bitch" after she refused to hold his hand.[18][19]
On November 18, 2021, Chishti left his roles at Afiniti.[20][21][22] On November 28, 2021, he resigned from all roles at TRG and its affiliates.[23]
In December 2022, Chishti filed a federaldefamation lawsuit against Spottiswoode, saying she had "weaponized" a "consensual love affair" and had lied under oath. The lawsuit was criticized as a disincentive to speak against rich abusers who could afford to bully witnesses with the threat of expensive litigation.[24] A week later, theHouse Judiciary Committee that Spottiswoode had testified to entered a 2019 arbitration tribunal ruling into the Congressional Record in support of the veracity of Spottiswoode's claims. JournalistMichael Schaffer called the document "utterly devastating for Chishti":[24] the arbitrator and his investigation had found that Chishti's conduct was "outrageous in character and extreme in degree, going beyond all possible bounds of decency"; that Chisti had groped Spottiswoode in front of colleagues, insulted her, brutally beat her, and had then lied about his activities after the fact; that Chishti had harassed other young female Afiniti employees and they had received monetary settlements in addition to Spottiswoode; and that the company had taken no action to attempt to prevent similar conduct from occurring in the future. It is speculated that Spottiswoode could not release the document herself without breaking the confidentiality requirements and imperiling her settlement, hence why the Judiciary Committee did it instead.[24]
Chishti lost a mandatory arbitration case on the dispute in which he was ordered to pay over $5 million to Spottiswoode. He subsequently lost, in October 2024, a defamation court case against Spottiswoode in theWashington DC District Court, which the court stated was a "thinly veiled attempt to undo the outcome of an arbitration that rejected Chishti’s account of events and ruled in Spottiswoode’s favour".[25][26]
In March 2025,The Daily Telegraph apologised and paid substantial damages in a libel settlement with Chishti in England, for its repeated reporting from November 2021 to February 2023 of sexual misconduct allegations made by Spottiswoode.[27]
In July 2001,People Magazine listed Chishti among the top 50 bachelors in the United States.[9] Chishti works out of Washington, D.C.[4] He is an avid chess player and skier.[10]
In 2020, Chishti married Sarah Pobereskin in Bermuda.[28][29]
BERMUDA, November 18, 2021 – The Board of Directors of Afiniti, Ltd. ("Afiniti") announces that Mr. Zia Chishti has stepped down from his role as Chairman, Chief Executive Officer, and Director of Afiniti, effective immediately.