Born in Atlanta, GA and raised in Seattle,WA Ivan Gaskin, was born an entrepreneur, he began his first business at the tender age of seven cutting his neighbors’ grass. One cut became two, then three and eventually over twenty-five regular customers, two employees and two contracts with the city, all before he entered high school.  While building his main business in landscaping, he went on to start other businesses and take on odd jobs doing everything from bread delivery to steel fabrication.  From the age of seven to age eighteen, Ivan held over 32 positions, over half of which were self-appointed in businesses that he started. Ivan went on to translate his work ethic in to a scholarship to a better high school across town, which allowed him to become the only one of his five closest friends in middle school to graduate high school.  Continuing with the theme of scholarship, Ivan went on to secure a Full-ride Academic Scholarship to Morehouse College, where he graduated Magna Cum Laude with a B.S. in Computer Science and a minor in Mathematics. While in college, he launched his first tech startup, a mobile Augmented-Reality application called Reflect.  He and his team went on to secure contracts with fortune 500 companies such as Lexus - Toyota and an array of other household names, as well as notoriety on local and smaller national news stations.  However, due to his lack of resourcefulness Reflect was soon made irrelevant by similar product released by apple and Facebook.  This highly competitive market presented Ivan with a question of what to do upon graduation.  On one hand would he continue driving Uber at night and building Reflect during the day or would he put his degree to work and look for his next opportunity. 

Upon graduation his team’s success with Reflect allowed him to continue his eight-year run of living on scholarship by allowing him to use the profits to purchase his first home at the age of 22.  The home was a duplex that paid for itself and even provided a profit after the mortgage was paid.  This home gave birth to his next business, GoodDirt Realty.  Ivan began to build GoodDirt while leveraging his technical background to do what he had to do to earn capital of his own which he believed he could use to purchase his freedom permanently.  He took a position as an SAP Consultant with Deloitte, the world’s largest professional services firm. There he gained a wealth of experience that he began to apply on a personal level to his real estate business.  Leveraging his entrepreneurial background and strong ties to the Atlanta University Center, Ivan began to provide affordable off-campus student housing which was in close proximity to the campuses. He continued to work at Deloitte, focus on his speaking career and growing his Real Estate firm.  Over the course of eighteen months, GoodDirt Realty grew from a company having zero assets to over a million-dollar portfolio that owned nine individual units and a few additional units under management. Ivan currently focuses on pursuing his purpose of actualizing the power of potential like no man living, dead or yet to be born.  He does this through providing perspective, provoking thought and co-learning with anyone, how to become better parts in order to make the world a better whole.