About

Luke Burgis is a veteran entrepreneur, a professor at the Busch School of Business at The Catholic University of America, and the author of Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life (St. Martin’s, 2021), translated into more than twenty languages, and The One and the Ninety-Nine (St. Martin’s, 2026), which National Review called “the best book on the problem of self and community written so far in the 21st century.”

He has founded and run four companies, worked on Wall Street, and is the founder and director of the Cluny Institute, which studies the intersection of faith, reason, and technology. In 2025 he received Catholic University’s Provost’s Advancement in Teaching Award. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Financial Times, Wired, and The Wall Street Journal. He is a graduate of New York University’s Stern School of Business, and went on to do graduate work in philosophy and theology, earning an STB from the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome.

Peter Thiel called Wanting “the clearest, most accessible introduction to René Girard available”; Adam Grant called it “a spellbinding read.” Tyler Cowen has called Luke “one of my favorite current thinkers.” He lives between Washington, DC and West Michigan with his wife and daughters.