Justin Olsson

Justin Olsson is an avid scuba diver and technologist with a lifelong love of all things marine. His passion for building and problem-solving began early, programming and learning electrical engineering and machine fabrication while captaining a FIRST Robotics team in high school. He went on to earn a degree in chemical engineering from Johns Hopkins.

Though his career path veered into law, Justin has remained deeply immersed in the world of AI and machine learning. As a product lawyer, he spent over eight years at the heart of foundational AI infrastructure companies — Databricks (creators of Apache Spark) and Anyscale (creators of Ray, the distributed computing technology behind OpenAI’s training of ChatGPT). These roles kept him embedded with engineers, working closely with the people building the tools that power modern machine learning.

Outside of work, Justin is a relentless tinkerer. He codes and builds hardware in his spare time, crafting custom IoT devices, hacking his car to deliver a near-OEM Android Auto experience, and stitching together open source tools while reverse-engineering vehicle CAN bus systems to create custom UX solutions.

A recent dive trip to the Great Barrier Reef — preceded by watching Chasing Coral with his son to learn a bit before we went — became a turning point. When he explained that not everyone was doing everything they could to save the reef, his son looked up and asked, “Well Dad, are you doing everything you can?” The question landed hard.

While Justin knows he can’t save the reef alone, he’s now choosing to redirect his skills — his love of diving, his technical fluency with AI, and his maker mindset — toward something that matters deeply: the protection and understanding of our oceans.

March 2025