As the son of a travelling ILO executive, Kevin O’Leary lived and
was educated in Cambodia, Cyprus, Tunisia, Ethiopia, France and
Switzerland. After receiving his Master of Business Administration, he
founded Special Event Television, an independent production company
producing such original sports programming as “The Original Six,”
“Don Cherry’s Grapevine” and “Bobby Orr and the Hockey
Legends.”

In 1986, O’Leary founded SoftKey Software Products (later called The
Learning Company), 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 Computing 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 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 leads the O’Leary Financial Group – a group of
companies that includes O’Shares Investment Advisers, O’Leary
Ventures and a continually growing roster of other businesses. 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 co-hosted Discovery
Channel’s “Project Earth” television series that explored the
financial implications of global climate change, and he is a regular
contributor on CNBC. O’Leary is an avid guitarist, photographer and
author. He has written three bestselling books, including “Cold Hard
Truth on Men, Women and Money,” and most recently, “Cold Hard
Truth on Family, Kids and Money.”

Find and follow Kevin O’Leary online at kevinoleary.com, Twitter and
Facebook.

PERSONAL INFORMATION
HOMETOWN: Boston, Massachusetts
BIRTHDATE: July 9
