Travis VanderZanden is an American businessman and the founder and former CEO of Bird. He was born in 1979 and grew up in Appleton, Wisconsin. He attended the University of WisconsinEau Claire and later earned an MBA from the USC Marshall School of Business. VanderZanden worked at Qualcomm, Yammer, and Lyft before co-founding Cherry, which was later acquired by Lyft. He then joined Uber as VP of International Growth before founding Bird in 2017.