Brian McClendon


Brian McClendon is an American software executive, engineer, and inventor. He was a co-founder and angel investor in Keyhole, Inc., a geospatial data visualization company that was purchased by Google in 2004 to produce Google Earth. Keyhole itself was spun off from another company called Intrinsic Graphics, of which McClendon was also a co-founder. He was inducted into the National Academy of Engineering in 2015.

Early life

McClendon grew up in Lawrence, Kansas. His childhood home, Meadowbrook Apartments in Lawrence, is the default center point of Google Earth. He graduated from Lawrence High School in 1982 and from the University of Kansas in 1986 with a degree in electrical engineering..

Career

Technology

McClendon spent eight years with Silicon Graphics developing high-end workstation 3D graphics including GT, GTX, RealityEngine, and InfiniteReality, and then was Engineering Director with @Home Network.
In 2001 he was one of the original investors in Keyhole, Inc., a software development company specializing in geospatial data visualization applications. He later joined the company as a vice-president of engineering. He was also a board member.
McClendon joined Google as an Engineering Director in 2004 when Keyhole was purchased. He was later promoted to Vice President of Geo. Keyhole's main application suite, Earth Viewer, formed the basis of Google Earth.
He left Google to join Uber in June 2015 to work on mapping. Although living in California, he maintained close ties with his alma mater, the University of Kansas, serving on advisory boards for both the School of Engineering and the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. He and his wife Beth Ellyn McClendon established the McClendon Engineering Scholarship at the university in 2007, donated computer tablets for electrical engineering and computer science students, and provided a Google Liquid Galaxy interactive display at the University's Eaton Hall. In 2013, he served as Grand Marshal of the University's homecoming parade.
In March 2017, he resigned from Uber to return to his hometown, indicating an interest in Kansas politics.

Politics

In January 2018, he announced his intention to run for Kansas Secretary of State as a Democrat. He ran unopposed in the primary election and was selected as the Democratic candidate. He was defeated in the general election by the Republican candidate Scott Schwab.

Awards and recognitions

McClendon received an honorary doctorate from his alma mater, the University of Kansas, "for outstanding contributions to the fields of electrical engineering and computer science." He has been recognized by the United Nations as a "Champion of the Earth", which is its top environmental prize, "for harnessing the power of technology to support conservation and green economic development."
McClendon holds twenty one issued patents, including nine relating to KML, the XML-based language schema for expressing geographic annotation and visualization in two-dimensional maps and three-dimensional Earth browsers. KML became an open standard for GIS data in 2008.