Kenneth Hess

Science Buddies

Hess founded Science Buddies in 2001 under the Kenneth Lafferty Hess Family Charitable Foundation, after observing his daughter's success with science fairs and recognizing that many students lack resources for such projects. The organization formalized its name to Science Buddies in 2010. In 2010, 9.8 million unique individuals visited the Science Buddies website, representing about 18% of U.S. K-12 students. The organization received the Science Prize for Online Resources in Education (SPORE) in April 2011, awarded by Science and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, recognizing the quality of resources Hess implemented to support K-12 educators and bridge the gap between researchers and students.

Career

Before starting his first company, Hess worked at Intel Corporation, Teradyne, Hewlett-Packard, and Symantec. He founded Banner Blue Software in 1984, which developed Family Tree Maker, genealogy software that became one of the top-selling personal productivity product lines in early 1996. Banner Blue also created Org Plus, a tool for corporate organization charts; a version labeled Microsoft Organization Chart was bundled with Microsoft Office for many years.

Hess wrote the initial versions of both programs and designed the initial version of Family Tree Maker Online. He bootstrapped Banner Blue from a $20,000 personal investment into a company with 100 employees and annual sales of $25 million, selling about 2 million copies of Family Tree Maker before Broderbund Software, Inc. acquired it in 1995. Hess later co-founded Pocket Express in 1999, which made software for Palm pocket computers; its product line was sold to Handmark, Inc. in 2002.

In 2024, Hess was selected to fly as a space tourist on Blue Origin's New Shepard NS-25 in April 2024, alongside Mason Angel, Sylvain Chiron, Carol Schaller, Gopichand Thotakura, and Ed Dwight.

Publications and patents

Hess authored the book Bootstrap: Lessons Learned Building a Successful Company From Scratch (S-Curve Press, 2001). He co-wrote the article 'Science Buddies: Advancing Informal Science Education' in Science (April 29, 2011). He holds U.S. Patent 4,764,867, 'Display System and Method for Constructing and Editing a Hierarchical Arrangement of Information,' issued August 1988. He also published 'Picking the Best Display: An Easy-to-Follow Guide' in Electronic Design (August 19, 1982).