Henry Nothhaft

The clock is ticking on Americas future. The innovation underpinnings of our economic strength grow weaker by the month. Yet with all our problems, our nation still has something that is unique in all the world: a culture of enterprising inventiveness in which risk is rewarded.

Henry R. Nothhaft is a highly-successful entrepreneur and tireless advocate of smart innovation policies in Washington, D.C. whose new book Great Again: Revitalizing Americas Entrepreneurial Leadership has become a national best seller. He is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and served in Vietnam as a Captain in the U.S. Marine Corps.

As a pathfinder in the telecommunications and networking industries he led a series of successful venture capital backed start-ups over a 35 year career that gave him the opportunity to create high performance organizations that invented many disruptive technologies resulting in hyper growth and radically changed new markets.

The former CEO of Tessera, a semiconductor miniaturization firm, Hank previously served as chief executive officer of Danger, that developed the wildly popular T-Mobile Sidekick smart phone, and engineered its acquisition by Microsoft in 2008 for $500 million. He also held the role of chief executive officer at early internet service provider that pioneered guaranteed network performance and created one of the fastest growing companies in the U.S., Concentric Network, where he led the company to a $70 million initial public offering and later a $2.9 billion acquisition by Nextlink Communications (now XO Communications).

His leadership with pioneering startups, Telenet Communications and Digital Switch helped revolutionize the telecommunications services industry and provided the foundation for the electronic messaging services and the Internet.

Hank has an MBA in Information Systems Technology from George Washington University and received the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award.