Guillermo Söhnlein Keynote Speaker

Guillermo Söhnlein is an explorer, entrepreneur, investor, and philanthropist with a passion for technology innovation and new venture creation in space, oceans, and sustainability. He has launched over a dozen for-profit ventures and nonprofit organizations, while also organizing and leading several ocean exploration expeditions involving crewed submersibles. He is an advisor, mentor, consultant, and speaker on a variety of topics related to the exploration and sustainable settlement of extreme environments on Earth, underwater, and in space.

Guillermo is currently co-founder and Chairman of the Humans2Venus Foundation, which supports Venus-focused science and education programs, co-founder and CEO of Blue Marble Exploration, which organizes ocean exploration expeditions for the purpose of scientific discovery and inspirational storytelling, and co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Space Bridge Partners, which connects private funding sources with exploration-, science-, and education-driven space missions. He also serves as Chairman of the WayPaver Foundation and the Mamoni Valley Preserve, as Global Ambassador for Wild Earth Allies, and as Advisor to two aero/space venture capital firms, E2MC Ventures and New Vista Capital.

Over the course of a 25-year entrepreneurial career that began in Silicon Valley at the height of the Internet Boom, Guillermo helped launch several notable ventures and organizations. In 2006, he founded Space Angels Network (now Space Angels), which connected accredited individual investors with seed-stage space ventures. In 2009, he co-founded OceanGate, which designed, built, and operated deep-diving crewed submersibles for use by customers in exploration, science, filmmaking, education, tourism, and oil & gas.

Admitted to The Explorers Club in 2012, Guillermo is also an expedition leader, submersible pilot, and scuba diver. Diving in Puget Sound, Monterey, Catalina Island, and Miami, his prior expeditions supported scientific efforts, collected valuable data, transported scientific personnel to key sites, generated volumes of content, and garnered mass media attention. In 2012, one noteworthy expedition discovered a previously unknown sunken WWII-era Grumman F6F Hellcat fighter plane that had been lost by the U.S. Navy 70 years prior.

Guillermo earned his A.B. in Economics from the University of California at Berkeley and his J.D. from the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco (formerly University of California Hastings College of the Law). He also served on active duty as an officer in the United States Marine Corps.