Dr. Lonnie Johnson is a literal rocket scientist who also happens to be the mastermind behind the legendary Super Soaker water gun. He’s also racked up over 250 patents and landed a spot in the National Toy Hall of Fame. Inventor, aerospace engineer, and entrepreneur, Dr. Johnson joins this week’s episode of Before IT Happened to talk about growing up during the civil rights movement, helping build stealth bombers and rockets for NASA, and making the the idea for the Super Soaker a reality.

Millions of people have been affected by data breaches and leaks in recent years. But what if there was a better way to keep our digital identities secure? In this week's episode of Before IT Happened, Locke Brown talks about how his company NuID is working to both simplify and strengthen online security by rethinking the traditional password-based approach to authentication in favor of a decentralized, user-controlled solution.

Vlad Panchenko, a lifelong gamer and technologist, is on course to one day build a massive metaverse community and exchange by connecting video gamers on mega gaming platforms. Vlad started his career in Ukraine at the age of 16, where he was paid by the kilobyte to translate pirated video games from English into Russian and Ukrainian. Byte by byte, Panchenko gained the experience that would lead him to create powerful gaming platforms. In this episode, Vlad talks about his latest creation,...

Feras Bashnak is a serial entrepreneur who knows first-hand the high cost of opening a business. Want to launch a brick-and-mortar restaurant? Half a million. How about a food truck? $100,000. Either way, you’re sinking a lot of cash into a huge commitment that you have yet to prototype ­– risks few young entrepreneurs are willing to take. In this week’s episode of Before IT Happened, Feras talks about the “aha” moment that led him to founding Ferla Bikes, an e-bike-powered food and retail...

Maurice Carrubba—also known as the Warren Buffett of restaurateurs—has a knack for finding classic restaurants with great bones and transforming them into go-to dining experiences. Born and raised in Sicily, Maurice moved to Silicon Valley in 1989 where he now runs a restaurant group and a catering company and employs over 150 people. Maurice also runs a nearby farm that sustains two of his restaurants, and he is working to reduce his carbon footprint and foster a culture of respecting and...

Modern life can be isolating. We’re wrapped up in our social media feeds, rushing to log into the next Zoom meeting, hurtling down the road in our metal capsules, or holed up in our houses. Being cut off from the natural world often leaves us feeling disconnected from ourselves and others. Enter this week’s guest on Before IT Happened, Joe Patitucci, who’s spent the last decade developing devices that connect us to nature by converting the biorhythms of plants into real-time music, or what he...

Silicon Valley is home to some of the world’s most innovative products and companies. Mighty among them are the design firms that help build and shape those products. In this episode of Before IT Happened, Tark Abed, founder and CEO of the product design consultancy Mighty Studios, talks to host Donna Loughlin about how he became an industrial designer, what his first years in the industry were like just down the street from Stanford’s Institute of Design a.k.a. the d.school in Palo Alto, and...

Carbon-heavy agriculture is responsible for 11% of greenhouse gases worldwide. That’s where Mark Schwager and his team at Monarch Tractor roll in, with the world’s first electric, autonomous smart tractor. Monarch sees its tractor as the future of sustainable agriculture, allowing growers to apply precision farming while cutting their diesel costs to virtually zero. Co-Founder and President of Monarch Tractor, Mark Schawager talks with host Donna Loughlin about the need for more automation...

There’s never been a better time to get on the electric bandwagon, or should we say highway? Alan Dowdell, CEO of REVO Powertrains, joins our host Donna Loughlin on this episode of Before IT Happened to talk about the $400 billion global environmental problem he and his company are working to tackle, converting existing, gas-powered trucks and buses to electric. Alan and his team are meeting this enormous challenge head-on with an integrated platform that retrofits large vehicles with...

The motorcycle industry is constantly evolving and Amber Spencer, a triple threat as Vice President of Worldwide Marketing at Damon Motorcycles, as well as a racer and bodybuilder, is now playing an active role in that transformation. As a minority in the motorcycle industry (women make up only 20% of the rider demographic, and women racers are nearly non-existent), Spencer is ready to confront the barriers to diversifying the sport. Ultimately, she sees a future where instead of being...

Fast fashion has created mountains of unwanted clothing that are rotting in landfills and even washing up on beaches. In this episode of Before IT Happened, host Donna Loughlin talks with Pawan Gupta, CEO and co-founder of the manufacturing platform Fashinza. The son of a factory manager in a small town in India, Pawan Gupta saw small factory owners, textile and fashion designers, and assembly line workers who couldn’t access larger suppliers and control how their products were made. Enter...

If robots are coming to take our jobs, let’s give them a really dangerous one: window washing. Ross Blum, president and COO at Skyline Robotics, joins host Donna Loughlin to talk about his company’s window washing robot, Ozmo. And cleaning is just the start. If Skyline Robotics achieves its vision, inspections, polishing, masonry, repairs, and testing, “all work at height” will be automated.

Humans have been exploiting the planet's natural resources since the dawn of civilization. This week’s guest on Before IT Happened, Troy Carter, would argue that even the term ‘natural resources’ is exploitative in and of itself. Co-founder and CEO of Earthshot Labs, a venture-funded non-profit backed by the National Science Foundation, Troy Carter joins host Dona Loughlin on the show to talk about his work repairing the planet through nature restoration, forest protection, and the...

Technology is transforming our world in a myriad of ways. Witnessing some of those changes from the frontlines is artist and documentarian Agnieszka Pilat whose subjects range from aging machinery to emerging technology. In this episode of Before IT Happened, Pilat joins host Donna Loughlin to talk about growing up behind the Iron Curtain in Poland, her fascination with robotics, NFTs, and her newest posting as artist-in-residence at Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

Autonomous trucking will soon transform not just our freeways but the entire global supply chain. Still, serious concerns remain about safety, workforce changes, and policy. In this episode of Before IT Happened, our host Donna Loughlin talks with Paula Bejarano, Director of Business Development for Navistar. Paula started as a reliability engineer at the European Space Agency, inspecting mechanical systems in space shuttles. She also worked on oil drilling rigs at Shell, and interned at...

Among the qualities that make a good entrepreneur, we rarely hear about humbleness, empathy or curiosity. Anne Cocquyt sees that as a problem. Cocquyt is the founder and CEO of the GUILD, a community centered around connecting female entrepreneurs, investors and thought leaders. She is also the author of Dare to Launch, which breaks down how to launch a startup successfully, touching on everything from building confidence to working with the right investors. In this episode, Anne joins our...

Commercial and industrial buildings waste around $200 billion worth of energy every year, and that is just in the US. Mark Chung is the Co-founder of Verdigris, a breakthrough AI-based sensor technology that helps companies monitor and reduce their energy usage. In this episode, Mark joins our host Donna Loughlin to discuss his mission to cut down on energy waste for the good of future generations, talking about how he identified an issue that went unnoticed for years and how he has since...

We’ve talked a lot about electrification and sustainable energy and transformational technologies shaping the ways we move through the world on Before IT Happened. In this episode, award-winning industrial designer and co-founder of Untitled Motorcycles Hugo Eccles joins the show to talk about his creative process driven by a passion for both riding and design, talking about his family’s deep connection with automobiles all the way to his current challenges designing e-bikes and trying to...

With a simple tweak to an airplane’s wing design, the aviation industry's global carbon emissions can be minimized dramatically while also improving safety and operating costs. Jacob Klinginsmith is the president of Tamarack Aerospace Group and his company is working to do just that with their patented active winglet technology. Jacob joins this episode to share a little bit about the lifelong passion that he has found in flying and explain how Tamarack works to increase aircraft efficiency...

Advancements in technology that accelerate change also bring risk. In this episode, I have an enlightening conversation with Carlos Moreira, founder of WISeKey and co-author of the book The TransHuman Code. Carlos has worked to ensure that in our relationship with technology, humans come out ahead. We talk about how we can create a human-centric society where humans are in control, and where humans are protecting themselves. He shares his transformation path working with the UN since the...

Impact investing is a rising trend. The massive amount of transactions online is helping users to shape the growth of companies they believe in. Eddy Soffer joins the show to talk about his role at Interactive Brokers helping manage their ESG platform Impact that specializes in environmental, social, and corporate governance investing. He explains how investors—particularly among the millennial and Gen Z demographics—increasingly drive change by voting with their wallets. We also cover topics...

Pretty soon, blockchain technology is going to touch just about everything you can imagine, including the food we eat. In this episode, Niamh O’Connell, BlockW Co-founder and Senior Business Development Manager at CasperLabs, joins the show to cover many questions around blockchain technology and how it’s creating smarter supply chains for the future. Niamh talks about her work at CasperLabs, going deep into how NFTs can impact the food and beverage industries and how we can reach more...

Dreaming of space is something many of us have done as kids, but as we grow up, we start to learn that there are only a few seats in every cabin, and not everyone is well represented in that group. Kim Macharia is the Executive Director of the Space Prize Foundation and Chairman of the Board of the Space Frontier Foundation. And it’s Kim’s personal mission to make it easier for women and people of color to work in the field. In this episode, we talk about how a space camp jacket and a...

Technology isn’t neutral: all technologies were created with a purpose, says Dr. Deb Doing a literature professor at Cal Poly whose work focuses on the intersection between technology and human rights. What does it mean to be human in the age of tech? How does technology shape our future on a day-to-day basis? And most importantly, what about ethics and how we behave through technological tools? In an age where we depend so heavily on technology, Deb says we need to look further and ask...