FOREVER Live! 2019 Program Booklet

mainstage
SPEAKERS
GLEN MEAKEM
Founder and CEO
Glen Meakem is the Founder & CEO of
FOREVER, the world’s first permanent media
storage and sharing company. FOREVER
provides consumers with a complete memorykeeping
platform, and its mission is to help
people save, organize, and share their memories
today, tomorrow, and for generations to come.
Glen is passionate about the FOREVER mission
and loves leading the company every day.
Glen is an experienced entrepreneur and
business leader who previously started a
successful business-to-business internet
company called FreeMarkets, taking it public in a
record setting IPO and growing it to almost $200 million in sales. FreeMarkets still exists
as part of the global software company, SAP.
Glen’s passion for preserving family memories goes back to 1991, when he returned from
serving as a U.S. Army officer in the First Gulf War. That summer, Glen and his wife, Diane,
collected old documents and photographs and recorded videos of their grandparents
talking about their lives, beliefs, and values. And since 1991, Glen and Diane have had five
children of their own and have made many new memories.
After many years, Glen realized that his family memories were everywhere – physical
scrapbooks, boxes, temporary cloud storage accounts, internet photo sites, cell phones,
old computers, etc. And, some of these memories were already being lost because of
device failures, expiring accounts, losses during moves, and general disorganization.
When Glen researched the issue further, he concluded that for his family memories to be
safely saved and shared for generations into the future, they would have to be stored in
the internet cloud. But, when he looked at specific service providers, he discovered that
literally every internet or cloud service available was temporary and would delete his
family memories under many circumstances. So, in 2013, Glen launched www.forever.com.
Through a lot of hard work, determination and listening to many people who care about
family memories, the company has achieved tremendous early success with a loyal
following of tens of thousands of clients and thousands of FOREVER Ambassadors who
are actively sharing FOREVER across the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand
and other countries. Glen believes this is just the beginning!
Glen graduated A.B. cum laude from Harvard University and later earned his M.B.A. from
Harvard Business School. After college, Glen was a combat engineer officer in the United
States Army Reserve, serving as a platoon leader in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait during the
First Gulf War. Early in his business career, Glen was a product manager with Kraft Foods,
and a consultant with McKinsey & Company.
Glen and his wife, Diane, have three daughters, two sons, and two terrific sons-in-law.
10 © 2019 Forever, Inc.