Kevin O’Leary

Entrepreneur, Best-Selling Author, & Star of ABC's Shark Tank

As one of the titular “sharks” on ABC’s Shark Tank, Kevin O’Leary quickly became one of the most compelling figures on the panel thanks to his astute, incisive, and always entertaining evaluations of potential entrepreneurs and the business ideas they hope will make them rich.

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Full Bio

Kevin O’Leary was born to a middle-class family in 1954. The combination of Kevin’s mother’s family heritage as merchants and his father’s Irish charisma truly meant that O’Leary was born for business. Kevin learned most of his business intuition from his mother. She taught him key business and financial insights from an early age. These became Kevin’s core philosophies and the pillars upon which he would one day build his empire.

After completing his MBA, O’Leary founded Special Event Television, an independent production company that produced original sports programming such as The Original Six, Don Cherry’s Grapevine, and Bobby Orr and the Hockey Legends.

O’Leary founded SoftKey Software Products (later called The Learning Company) in 1986. SoftKey was the first software company to apply the principles of consumer goods marketing to the software industry. SoftKey grew quickly as the price of personal computers declined and millions of American families began to buy software for education and entertainment. SoftKey soon became a catalyst of consolidation in the software industry, raising over $1 billion in financing and completing a series of aggressive acquisitions, including WordStar International, Spinnaker Software, Compton’s New Media, The Learning Company, Creative Wonders, the Minnesota Educational Computer Company, Mindscape and Broderbund. By 1998, O’Leary’s company was the undisputed world leader in educational, reference, and home productivity software and the world’s second largest consumer software company, with annual sales over $800 million, 2,000 employees, and offices in 15 countries. In 1999, Mattel acquired the company for $4.2 billion.

In 2003, O’Leary co-founded Storage Now, a leading developer of climate controlled storage facilities. Through a series of development projects and acquisitions, Storage Now soon had operations in 11 cities, serving such companies as Merck and Pfizer, and was acquired by In Storage REIT in March 2007 for $110 million.

In 2007, O’Leary became a founding investor and Director of Boston-based Stream Global Services Inc., focused on the growing outsourcing business services market.

Today, O’Leary is the Chairman of O’Leary Funds, a Canadian mutual fund company with $1 billion under management, and the Chairman of O’Shares Investments. He is also the founder and Chief Sommelier of O’Leary Fine Wines, an award-winning wine label, as well as a member of Boston’s 107-year old Hamilton Trust. In addition to Shark Tank, O’Leary is a regular contributor on ABC, CNBC and CTV, and a bestselling author of three books: Cold Hard Truth, Men, Women and Money, and Cold Hard Truth on Family, Kids and Money.

O’Leary holds a B.A. in environmental studies and psychology from the University of Waterloo and an MBA from the Richard Ivey School of Business, where he serves as a board member.

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MEDTRONIC

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UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI – KANSAS CITY

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BAYLOR UNIVERSITY CAMPUS

We had a fantastic day with Inge! She was very engaging with all those that attended. Her personal stories about the holocaust were very special and we were moved that she was willing to share them with everyone. Thank you again, PDA for all your hard work and dedication to make this program such a success!

SALT LAKE COMMUNITY COLLEGE

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SAP COMPANY

Thank you again, Dr. Kimbrough, for a great presentation, our attendees are still talking about it!

CAMPUS LABS

Dr. Henry Lee's presentation was entertaining, insightful and wise. I, and everyone at Pfizer, especially appreciate the remarks you directed about following your passion and preparing yourself to excel. Thank you, everyone, at PDA for helping to make this happen!

PFIZER

The event was successful! I received many messages expressing how awesome, outstanding and inspiring Ms. Webb-Christburg's speech was."

DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. MEMORIAL BREAKFAST, BOSTON, MLK SPEAKER

Everything went well. Atsuko was very easy to work with and the students enjoyed her performance! Thank you again for your recommendation and I hope to work with you again in the future!

CENTRAL MICHIGAN UNIVERSITY

Dr. Novello left this morning after a very successful event on our campus! Thank you PDA Group for your help from the first phone to the last you were with us every step of the way.

GRAND VALLEY STATE UNIVERSITY

Jordan Carlos was very very entertaining! A majority of students who answered the event survey indicated they really enjoyed Jordan and definitely will bring him back!

WESTERN CAROLINA UNIVERSITY

On behalf of myself and my organization Entertainment Unlimited the Campus Programming Board of Ferris State University, we thank you PDA and Dan for a successful event!! Dan was magnificent! Students really enjoyed the presentation. I know I did. Can't wait to bring in more programs with PDA Group.

FERRIS STATE UNIVERSITY

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WESTERN MICHIGAN UNIVERSITY

Thank you, Peter, for all your help, you'll be happy to know that the event went incredibly well! Aneesa Ferreira was by far one of the best speakers we've ever had!