Gordon Michael Lear

Gordon Michael Lear is an American technology expert, entrepreneur, innovator, software developer, business analyst, system engineer and philanthropist. Born October 13, 1969 in Portsmouth, Portsmouth, NH and a descendant of George Washington's secretary Tobias Lear. Lived in Greenland, Greenland NH until the age of 16 and then returned to Portsmouth until moving to Sarasota, FL in 1996. Lear meet his wife, Kelley Lynne Sullivan, in the fall of 1990 and were married four years later on January 1, 1994. He attended the University of New Hampshire from 1991 to 1994 where he studied Biology but soon switched to Computer Science. 
Lear was working towards his Microsoft Engineer certifications prior to Y2K and found his first job decommissioning and reverse engineering an AS400 mainframe that managed the fueling and billing of the entire vehicle fleet for the City of Sarasota, including the entire Public Works and Police Department. After Year Y2K Lear worked for a Cable Test and Monitoring company in the Information Technology Department. Here he was part of a small application group and gained valuable experienced working with extremely technical high-end users. After his company was purchased from a Boston, MA venture capital group he found himself in a large 1.2B corporation as a lead technologist running the corporate website which was published in 7 language and had a local presence in 48 countries. The newly created company struggled from day one and in less than three years and 11 consecutive quarters with layoffs Lear suffered from survivors guild and left the company. Lear began working with a small start up as a database developer where he was responsible for their ETL process that managed electronic catalogs for thousands of natural product retailers. After 10 years with this company Lear was the VP of Development and IT running R&D, Customer Services, Tech Support, Data Ops, Dev Ops, and IT. Working directly with C-Level leadership in major corporations like UNFI, Sprouts Farmers Market, The Fresh Market, Intel, SPINS Lear was the key player responsible for closing many multi-million dollar deals. In 2014 a new CEO was hired and took the company to St Petersburg, FL. Lear decided to decline the relocation offer and start his own consulting firm so he could spend more time with his only son that was 12yrs old at the time. However, before leaving Lear designed an industry first online B2B catalog system that rivaled anything on the market turning dumb handheld scanners into powerhouse business intelligent devices providing useful and actionable information directly to the frontlines in real-time. To this day his little side project is now the company's flagship product.
Lear spent the next six years building a small executive consulting company and a home services company. But what he is most known for is his work with many local non-profits whos main focus is youth development. Lear is a mentor with Take Stock in Children and a Level Two Volunteer in the Sarasota School System. He also sat on the Sarasota YMCA Advisory Board but resigned after several attempts to get answers to several questions about operational costs. A year after he resigned the YMCA closed all its fitness branches, lost its YMCA affiliation and changed its name. Lear continues to work closely with Sarasota Sharks Inc and Take Stock in Children.
Category:American entrepreneurs
Category:American philanthropists
Category:American technology executives