Biography
Hahna is the CEO and Co-Founder of SolePower. She is a Carnegie Mellon mechanical engineer with a background in the space industry from NASA. At SolePower, Hahna leads the team to commercialize smart, self-charging work boots that help industrial workforces be safer and more efficient. The “SmartBoot” uses the downward motion in a step to create power, which charges a suite of sensors embedded inside the boot. Data is sent to the cloud and used to solve remote management issues for workers in high risk sectors like security, production, warehousing, and defense. The team’s goal is to combine the functionalities of consumer wearables onto a single, compact, self-charged platform – eventually for use in a variety of shoes across consumer and commercial sectors. Development of SolePower’s energy harvesting technology was supported by the National Science Foundation and US Army. SolePower received a Popular Science Invention of the Year award in 2014 and demoed at the first annual White House Maker Faire. Hahna was named a 2017 Toyota Mother of Invention, and 2015 Forbes 30 under 30 in Energy. SolePower is based out of Pittsburgh, PA.