Margaret “Meg” Hansson

Margaret “Meg” Hansson’s entrepreneurial career started early in Huntington, West Virginia, when at 10 years of age, she partnered with a lender (her mother) to start a venture selling soda to roller skaters on the newly paved street in front of her house. Her long career as an entrepreneur, inventor, and community leader supported her lifelong goal of transforming society for the better.

Hansson attended high school at The Madeira School in McLean, Virginia and resided in Washington, DC, with her grandfather, Senator Howard Sutherland. She graduated with a B.A. from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Hansson was awarded the Horace Mann Award, the highest honor given to an Antioch alumnus. She exemplified the directive of Horace Mann, the college’s first president, to ”Be ashamed to die until you have achieved some victory for Humanity.”

Hansson moved to Boulder, Colorado where she lived for over 60 years raising her four children, founding and growing eight start-up companies, inventing patented products, investing, serving on boards, stimulating entrepreneurship, and helping women succeed.  Hansson invented, developed, and marketed the first frame baby carrier backpack, the Gerry Carrier, which created new freedom for parents (and especially women) and an enduring multi-million-dollar industry. She held four patents in that industry. In the 1990s, endlessly curious, she turned to the water industry where she led public and private companies. A true innovator, Hansson could always see the larger picture, tap her intuition, and understand how new discoveries could point the way to future businesses. In 1997, she established ERTH Technologies, with partner Paul Cornay, using a novel centrifuge for wastewater treatment, which they patented. That technology yielded two offshoot technologies and two new companies, one to treat hazardous organic wastes through oxidation and the other to create organic fertilizer and natural gas from animal and other organic wastes.

Hansson served as a role model, mentor, and financial supporter to aspiring female executives through her work in the top Colorado and international women’s leadership organizations and in corporations.  She became an important advocate for women’s equality, working to change conditions that adversely impacted women. She did this through service on many influential boards and commissions, often as one of the first woman directors of private and public enterprises, including Wells Fargo Banks of Colorado, The White House Commission on Small Business, The Governor’s Council on Small Business, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Colorado, and many others. Hansson was a founding member of the Committee of 200, an organization of national and international women entrepreneurs and corporate innovators formed to foster, celebrate, and advance women’s leadership in business. Hansson was a connector — her quiet, behinds-the-scenes networking connected people and created opportunities.

Additionally, she was at the cutting edge in balancing her personal life with a successful professional, entrepreneurial life. She raised four young children while pursuing her business dreams. Her family was always her top priority.

Highly awarded, Hansson was a successful entrepreneur, inventor, business executive, board director, mother, family woman, and community leader who loved what she did and did it well. Her pioneering businesses and products, which helped women, families, and the planet, are known world-wide. She inspired uncountable numbers of women and men, as well as thousands of entrepreneurs and others through her life and actions.