gabE wyner
Entrepreneur | Author | Educator
"Mash up the DNA of Steve Jobs and Aristotle, add training in engineering and opera, and you get Gabriel Wyner, whose ingeniously elegant system helps us knuckleheads learn not just foreign languages but, well, everything. Autodidacts rejoice!”
--Jay Heinrichs, author of Thank You for Arguing and Word Hero
accolades
WSJ Bestselling Author
Launched the most successful crowdfunding campaign for an app in history
Crain's Notable 2021 LGBTQ Executive
CURRENT Projects
Fluent Forever – Author: Penguin Random House has requested a 2nd edition for my book's 10 year anniversary. To that end, I've added around 30% to the original book and we're now in the final stages of editing. Expected publication date in Q4 of 2024
Fluent Forever, Inc – Executive Chairman: I continue to serve on our board and as a weekly advisor and pedagogue for our team
Ankihub, Inc. – Executive Strategy and Operations Consultant: I really enjoy helping groups of people find a common story to believe in. Strategy and operations are a special kind of story telling to me, in that the story emerges out of the group but then impacts the group and produces rapid and visible changes in that group's day to day operations. It's super fun work. I'm doing this type of work for AnkiHub along with a decent helping of product owner type work.
Wyner Family Consulting – Project Manager and Editor: This project is a combination of almost every skillset I have. I'm attempting to build an audience for an author who has more than 5 books written but not yet published. It's a literal lifetime of creative work that needs the skills of a full-blown marketing and editing team. And so to maximize my impact, I'm training, building and automating this team via a fleet of LLMs. This is my first foray into programming, and it's been a fascinating journey thus far.
LGBTQ Chamber of Commerce of Illinois – Bootcamp Mentor: I mentor young queer founders on fundraising and pitching at the end of each of their bootcamps
StartOut Chicago – Programming Board Member: I help design and set up programming for the LGBTQ entrepreneur community of Chicago
Next Book (TBA): I'm in the process of writing a new book. I'll share details later on!
NEXT Projects
After reaching out to my network in search of my next projects, I am now mostly full up, but I'm always interested in discussing ideas for the future. I expect future roles to resemble one of the following positions:
Product Owner/Product Manager - With a particular knack for skills development and education products
Consultant - In learning and development, strategy, and communications
Innovation Manager - In educational institutions/organizations
Chief Learning Officer - CLO roles would utilize my strengths as an executive and my skills development expertise
Entrepreneur in Residence / VC - I'm fueled by teaching and mentorship, and an EIR or VC role would provide a fertile ground for that side of me, provided that the VC firm prioritizes founder education
Other - I taught myself to write in 6 months and became a national bestselling author. I taught myself to learn languages and became fluent in 8 of them. If your field doesn't have many experts, and you need me to reach expertise in that field, then I enjoy that type of challenge.
Reach out if you are looking for an expert in skills acquisition and growth, with strengths in leadership, communications, and project management
EXAMPLE WORK AND PUBLIC SPEAKING VIDEOS
TEDx New Bedford: One of my more polished talks on language learning
LAUNCH Accelerator: A good showcase for my presentation style, how I pitch an idea under pressure, and for how I respond to a timed, rapid-fire Q&A session
Mensa Annual Gathering 2022: A detailed exploration of how I solve educational problems, and a view into how I work with crowds
Biography
Five years of high-school language classes taught Gabe one thing: he would never master another language. But he was determined to change his fate in a remarkable way.
Born in Los Angeles, Gabe graduated summa cum laude in 2007 from the University of Southern California with dual degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Vocal Arts Performance. After he was awarded the Renaissance Scholar’s prize for excellence in unrelated disciplines, he moved to Vienna to pursue triple Master’s degrees in Opera, Lieder, and Voice at the Konservatorium Wien, graduating with honors in 2011.
Searching for a way to bring the immersive language learning experience home with him, Gabe began to apply his analytical and engineering talents to developing a system that rapidly builds fluency with short, daily sessions – without the need for a tutor or immersion.
In 2010, his efforts paid off. Using his custom-designed system, he reached fluency in French in 5 months, followed by Russian in 10 months. This marked an astounding four total languages learned in under two years.
Following these achievements, Gabe’s book, “Fluent Forever: How to Learn Any Language Fast and Never Forget It,” became a national bestseller. The Fluent Forever app, built around his method, became a record-breaking Kickstarter campaign, raising more money in history than any other Kickstarter app at a whopping $1.7M.
Currently used by tens of thousands of people each month, the Fluent Forever app reached people in over 100 countries around the world by 2021. Gabe can now hold comfortable conversations in Spanish, German, French, Russian, Italian, Hungarian, and Japanese. He has a dog named Norbert, who has an impressive 19,000 followers on Instagram and serves as Fluent Forever’s mascot.
