Kathy Hannun

Co-Founder and President, Dandelion Energy

2020 Entrepreneurship Award Winner

Kathy Hannun is the Co-Founder and President of Dandelion Energy, the largest home geothermal company in the United States. Dandelion uses high-performance equipment and a proprietary, low-cost installation process to transition homeowners from fossil-powered to earth-powered heating and cooling. Before founding Dandelion, Hannun was a Rapid Evaluator at X, Alphabet's innovation lab, where she focused on finding “Moonshots,” i.e., business opportunities to harness technology for large-scale positive impact. She initiated Dandelion as an X project and then launched it into an independent startup company in May 2017. Dandelion has since raised $35 million in funding from top venture capitalists, set a new standard for geothermal quality and cost-effectiveness, and empowered homeowners to avoid over 100 million pounds of carbon emissions and counting. The company has partnered with Con Edison utility to promote heat pumps as an alternative to gas heating and successfully advocated for increased policy support for heat pumps throughout the Northeast. In addition, Dandelion has increased public awareness of the benefits of ground source heat pumps through stories in media such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Fast Company, WIRED, Bloomberg, and Techcrunch. Hannun has been recognized as a TED Fellow, one of Fast Company’s Most Creative People in Business, and one of MIT Technology Review’s “35 under 35.” She graduated from Stanford with a BS in Civil Engineering and an MS in Computer Science.