Confessions of a Serial Entrepreneur with Olin Lagon
June 15, 2022 @ 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm HST
Olin Lagon is a serial social entrepreneur, innovator, and community organizer, currently focused on clean energy and STEM education. He founded multiple companies and nonprofits. He holds multiple patents and his designs have been adopted by Global 1000 companies across five different industries. His inventions have also been used in several institutions such as the Olympics and MIT. As one example, he invented and launched the first commercial crowdfunding service which scaled to channel $100 million to fund causes worldwide. One nonprofit he co-founded is Purple Maiʻa, focused on Hawaiian-grounded stem programs in education, entrepreneurship, and workforce development. He has spoken at conferences worldwide including a keynote speaker at Microsoftʻs Annual Developerʻs Conference (creating energy storage using machine learning and existing household appliances). His community service includes the U.S. Navy, the Peace Corps, and numerous nonprofits. In 2020, he along with some friends designed and hand built ventilators when Hawaiʻi had insufficient supply. He’s a past Petra Fellow (Center for Community Change) and East West Center Fellow (general engineering and Asian industrialization). Olin is native Hawaiian and practices indigenous farming on weekends. He and his wife Alison have two boys, both students at Kamehameha Schools.