Guillermo Söhnlein

Guillermo Söhnlein
Born	(1966-05-18) 18 May 1966 (age 58) Buenos Aires, Argentina
Nationality (legal)	American
Education	University of California, Berkeley University of California Hastings College of the Law
Occupation	Social entrepreneur
Known for	co-founder of OceanGate

Guillermo Söhnlein (born May 18, 1966) is an Argentine-American businessman, best known as the co-founder of deep-sea exploration company OceanGate. Söhnlein left the company in 2013, retaining a minority stake.^[1][2]

Biography

Guillermo Söhnlein was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1966.^{[citation needed]} He emigrated to the United States in 1972 with his family, where they settled in San Jose, California.^{[citation needed]} He attended St. Francis High School in Mountain View. He became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1986.^{[citation needed]} He graduated in December 1989 from the University of California at Berkeley with a B.A. in economics. In May 1995, he earned a J.D. from the University of California Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco, where he was Editor-in-Chief of the West-Northwest Journal of Environmental Law and Policy.^[3]

From 1995 to 1999, he served in the United States Marine Corps, achieving the rank of Captain.

In 2011, Söhnlein was accepted as a Fellow of Opus Novum,^{[citation needed]} a group committed to professional conduct guided by Seven Principles.^[4]

Professional career

In 1998, Söhnlein co-founded Milo, a speech recognition technology company that was acquired by Voxeo^[5] in 2001.

After relocating to the Northern Virginia region outside Washington, D.C., he worked with a number of technology startup ventures,^[6][7][8] and advised several technology-related investment groups, incubators, and economic development agencies,^[9][10] and gave frequent talks about the field.^[11][12]

Space commercialization ventures

In 2003, Söhnlein founded the International Association of Space Entrepreneurs (IASE), which was a nonprofit organization created to encourage successful entrepreneurs from other industries to start aerospace-related ventures and start-ups.^[13][14] The group grew from 5 people to almost 1,500 individuals around the world.^[15] In 2010, the online community was transferred to the Space Frontier Foundation for ongoing growth, and IASE officially disbanded.^[16]

In 2006, he founded Space Angels Network, a for-profit angel investor group for early-stage aerospace ventures.^[15][17]

Venusian colony project

SFF planned sending thousands people above floating city on Venus around 2050.^[18][19][20]

Ocean exploration ventures

In 2009, Söhnlein co-founded OceanGate with Stockton Rush, a venture that provided deep-sea crewed submersibles.^[21]

In 2010, he re-launched the Ocean Exploration Committee of the Marine Technology Society, a nonprofit membership association supporting students and industry professionals in marine-related fields.^[22]

In 2013, he founded Blue Marble Exploration, which organized high-profile expeditions to explore the oceans in crewed submersibles.

Sea-Space Connections

In 2011, Söhnlein founded the Sea-Space Initiative, a global project to provide collaboration in ocean and space industries.^[23] The first program, launched in May 2012, is the Sea-Space Summit, a global series of invitation-only workshops.^[24][25]

References

This page was last edited on 10 May 2024, at 07:32