Kent Dahlgren

About Kent Dahlgren

Kent Dahlgren has been building community systems since he was a teenager. Long before his corporate career, and while working in his father\'s startup - a wholesale spice company - he worked at the grassroots level translating cultural energy into durable civic infrastructure, guided by mentors,(including his grandparents), who came of age during the Civil Rights era.As a founding member of the City of Portland’s Skatepark Planning and Advisory Team (SPLAT), Kent helped shape what became the first municipal skatepark system in the United States, turning a fringe youth movement into institutional policy later adopted by cities across the country.He later founded and led the nonprofit Skaters for Public Skateparks, partnering with the Tony Hawk Foundation and the International Association of Skateboard Companies to publish The Public Skatepark Development Guide, a landmark resource that enabled cities nationwide to institutionalize public skateparks. His work earned him a seat on the board of the Tony Hawk Foundation and established a pattern that would define his career: build systems communities can depend on.A U.S. Air Force veteran and former Combat Communications Operator, Kent built a foundation in securing critical infrastructure before moving into senior leadership roles at Fortune companies including Tektronix and Xerox. Over nearly four decades he has led large-scale product development initiatives supporting technologies used by billions of people and processing tens of billions of transactions.Parallel to his corporate leadership, Kent continued building practical laboratories of local governance, launching farmers markets and economic initiatives that strengthened community-scale commerce.As CTO of an Amsterdam-based firm, he helped build digital self-governance tools for stateless and refugee communities; work recognized by UNESCO in 2017 for its support of Syrian refugees with the same award that put Twitter on the map.Today, as Chief Operating Officer of Terra Global Developments and architect of the TerraCore framework, Kent applies the same principle that has guided his work for decades: communities thrive when their systems are durable, secure, and executable.His leadership reflects a belief long practiced rather than newly adopted; that meaningful change occurs not through disruption alone, but through institutionalizing the preferences that make communities stronger.

Experience

1. Founder

   214 Alpha

   Oct 2018 — Present · Austin, TX, US

   We built a government so small you can fit it in your pocket.Within our model, a motivated organization breaks even in nine months, and doubles their initial investment in a year.

Education

• Portland State University

  Accounting and Finance

  2007 — 2010

• US Air Force

  Combat Communications Operations

  1986 — 1998