Guy Kawasaki Keynote Speaker

Guy Kawasaki was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, in 1954 and raised in Kalihi Valley. His father was a fireman, real estate broker, state senator, and government official; his mother was a homemaker. He attended Iolani School, where his AP English teacher Harold Keables inspired his lifelong love of writing and editing.

Guy graduated from Stanford University in 1976 with a degree in psychology, then briefly attended UC Davis Law School before realizing it wasn’t for him. He earned an MBA from UCLA, where he worked for a jewelry manufacturer—his first real job counting diamonds. From that experience, he learned how to sell, a skill that would define his career.

After working for EduWare Services, Guy joined Apple in the early 1980s thanks to his Stanford roommate, Mike Boich. As one of Apple’s first evangelists, he championed the Macintosh to developers and met his wife there. He later founded ACIUS, the company behind the database software 4th Dimension, followed by Fog City Software, creator of Emailer and LetterRip.

In 1995, Guy returned to Apple as an Apple Fellow to help reinvigorate the Macintosh community. Two years later, he co-founded Garage.com (now Garage Technology Ventures), an early-stage venture capital firm. In 2004, he launched Alltop, an online news aggregation site.

Guy served as special advisor to Google’s Motorola division in 2013 and, in 2014, became chief evangelist of Canva, helping to democratize design. He later joined the board of trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation to advance the democratization of knowledge and became a brand ambassador for Mercedes-Benz USA.

Today, Guy remains Canva’s chief evangelist and hosts Remarkable People, a podcast featuring guests such as Jane Goodall, Angela Duckworth, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Steve Wozniak. He calls it the most meaningful—and most underappreciated—work of his career. Through it all, he still tries to surf every day.