Steven Kirsch

Steven Kirsch

Overview

* Co-founder of the Steven and Michele Kirsch Foundation
* Founded both Propel Software and the Infoseek Corporation
* Member of the Ploughshares Fund’s Advisory Board
* Donated half a million dollars to support Al Gore’s 2000 presidential campaign


Born on December 24, 1956 in Los Angeles, California, Steven Todd Kirsch holds BS and MS degrees in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. As a high-school student in 1972, he worked with one of the acclaimed “fathers of the Internet,” Vint Cerf. Since then, Kirsch has founded a number of well-known technology companies, including Mouse Systems (1982), Frame Technology (1986), Infoseek Corporation (1994), Propel Software Corporation (1999), Abaca Technology Corporation (2005), and OneID (2011).

In 1999 Kirsch and his wife, Michele, created the Steven and Michele Kirsch Foundation to promote radical environmentalism and the elimination of nuclear weapons.

Though he was a registered Republican at the time, Kirsch in 2000 donated $500,000 to Al Gore‘s recount campaign in the aftermath of that year’s disputed presidential election.

Since at least 2004 Kirsch has supported exclusively Democratic political campaigns, including those of such notables as Barbara Boxer, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Mike Honda, Barack Obama, Harry Reid, and Bill Richardson. He also has given money to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

In August 2007 Kirsch was diagnosed with Waldenstrom’s Macroglobulinemia, a rare form of blood cancer. Two months later, the Kirsch Foundation announced that it would thenceforth focus its philanthropy entirely on cancer research.

In addition to his business and philanthropic pursuits, Kirsch is an advisory board member of the Ploughshares Fund, a pro-disarmament, anti-war organization.

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