John Lert
John Lert, Founder and CEO of Alert Innovation, has enjoyed a 40-year career solving business problems through technology, as both an inventor and entrepreneur. More than 25 years ago, Lert began thinking about the possibility of an automated supermarket, and this interest led him to start working in automated materials handling. In 2007, he founded the company Symbotic to commercialize his invention of a mobile-robotic technology to automate case-picking in retail distribution centers, which won an Edison Award for innovation in 2013. Lert sold Symbotic in 2009 and later partnered with Bill Fosnight to co-invent Alphabot, a breakthrough robotic each-picking technology. In 2016, Lert and Fosnight launched Alert Innovation to develop Alphabot. The first commercial pilot of that technology is now operational in a Walmart supercenter in Salem, NH. Lert received both BA and MBA degrees from the University of Virginia.
