Luis is a licensing professional at Stanford University and is the former CEO of Hawaiian Ethos, LLC, a medical cannabis company in Hawaii.
He led Hawaiian Ethos through all startup phases: financing, product development, hiring, retail dispensary construction, operations, marketing and first revenue. Prior to Hawaiian Ethos he was Associate Director in the Office of Technology Licensing at Stanford University and is the Founder of the Stanford Innovation Farm Teams (iFarm Teams).
As Stanford OTL’s Associate Director, he led a team of Licensing Associates with a technology portfolio of over 1,600 technologies ranging from engineering to medicine, representing 75% of Stanford’s license revenue. In his 30+ years at Stanford, he managed the University’s two biggest patents, three major patent litigations (including two cases argued before the US Supreme Court), negotiated over 250 licenses, and evaluated over 700 inventions, including the PageRank Algorithm which was the instrumental IP that led to the creation of Google.
Mr. Mejia has been involved with the founding of several Silicon Valley start-ups and been an advisor to research organizations such as Los Alamos National Laboratory and Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. Before joining Stanford, he worked on solar energy systems and energy management at Honeywell and Pacific Gas & Electric.
He has a BS degree in Energy Systems (Mechanical) Engineering from Arizona State University and is a recipient of an award for Excellence in Technology Transfer from the Department of Energy, Federal Laboratory Consortium. Mr. Mejia is an Advisor to the Realizing Environmental Innovation Program at Stanford, a co-Founder of VoterCapital.org and ClimateDonor.org and is a Fellow of the Disruptor Foundation.