Jerry Li
Jerry Li is the CEO and Co-Founder of Gradual, the all-in-one community platform built to turn engagement into insight and scale connection with purpose. Before starting Gradual, he led engineering teams at Amazon and Groupon, focusing on building systems at scale and mentoring emerging leaders. His passion for community took shape through building ELC—the Engineering Leadership Community—which has grown into the world’s largest and most recognized network for engineering leaders and executives. What began as small, in-person gatherings evolved into a global community. During the shift to virtual at the start of the pandemic, the internal tools created to support ELC became the foundation for Gradual. Today, Gradual powers communities for companies like OpenAI, Perplexity, Fiverr, Scale AI, and Siemens. Jerry remains focused on helping organizations build community-led ecosystems that drive growth, deepen relationships, and unlock collective intelligence.