In his position with HBS, Learner holds a joint appointment in the Finance and the Entrepreneurial Management Areas. He graduated from Yale College with a Special Divisional Major that combined physics with the history of technology, before working for several years on issues concerning technological innovation and public policy, at the Brookings Institution, for a public-private task force in Chicago, and on Capitol Hill. He then earned a Ph.D. from Harvard's Economics Department.

Much of his research focuses on the structure and role of venture capital and private equity organizations. This research is collected in three books, The Venture Capital Cycle, The Money of Invention, and the recent Boulevard of Broken Dreams (which was published by Princeton University Press as part of the Kauffman Series on Innovation and Entrepreneurship).

In the 1993-94 academic year, he introduced an elective course for second-year MBAs on private equity finance. In recent years, “Venture Capital and Private Equity” has consistently been one of the largest elective courses at Harvard Business School.