Henk Rogers

Henk Rogers is a pioneer in the video game industry and founder of The Tetris Company. In the 1980s, Rogers brought role-playing games to Japan and turned a little-known game called Tetris into an international phenomenon after intense negotiations with the Soviet Union and Nintendo. His efforts helped establish the Game Boy as a market leader and made Tetris one of the most popular games of all time. Rogers’ story became folklore in the gaming industry and is the subject of the 2023 Apple TV+ film “Tetris.” Today, Rogers is the founder of 10 companies and non-profit organizations focused on software technologies, space colonization, and implementing renewable energy. A near-fatal heart attack in 2005 made Rogers identify his true missions in life and led to him founding the Blue Planet Foundation, a non-profit organization that has been instrumental in implementing renewable energy policies in Hawaii and 15 other U.S. states. Realizing this model needed to be exported to the rest of the world, Rogers founded the Blue Planet Alliance in 2021, an organization helping island communities disproportionately affected by climate change transition from being reliant on importing fossil fuels to using 100 percent renewable energy. Rogers is also the founder of Blue Planet Energy, a leader in renewable energy storage systems, and the International Moonbase Alliance, an organization with the goal to build sustainable settlements on the Moon and Mars and establish Hawaii as a leader in the space industry. Today, Rogers continues to be an influential figure in both the gaming industry and the sustainable energy sector. He has received numerous awards for his contributions to both fields, including an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Hawaii, the Ellis Island Medal of Honor, the Cronkite Award for Ocean Champions, being inducted into the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences’ Hall of Fame in 2008, and being named CEO of the Year by Hawaii Business Magazine in 2015. He currently lives between his off-grid ranch in Hawaii and New York City and continues to be an active entrepreneur pursuing his passion for making a positive impact on the world. Henk Rogers’ bold vision for the future centers around creating a world in which humanity and nature live in harmony and his mission of ending the use of carbon-based fuels. An influential figure in the fight against climate change, Rogers believes that locally-driven policy change is the essential domino that can activate solutions at the pace and scale needed to meet the challenge of climate change. In 2007, Rogers’ created the Blue Planet Foundation, an organization which successfully lobbied Hawaiian lawmakers to mandate a legislative commitment to using 100 percent renewable energy sources for electricity in Hawaii by 2045. This groundbreaking legislation provided a reimagined climate strategy and was adopted by fifteen states and two territories in the United States. Realizing this model needed to be exported to the rest of the world, Rogers in 2021 founded the Blue Planet Alliance, an organization which helps islands and countries around the world to legislatively mandate a commitment to 100 percent renewable energy by 2045 and stop importing fossil fuels. Founded Bullet-Proof Software in Yokohama, Japan, and launched Japan’s first role-playing game, The Black Onyx, which went on to become Japan’s 1 computer game in 1984. Discovered Tetris at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, licensed the rights for Japan and published Tetris on eight different personal computer platforms and the Nintendo Famicom. Traveled to Moscow and secured the rights to distribute Tetris on Nintendo’s Game Boy system from ELORG, the Soviet organization responsible for the import and export of computer software. ELORG was the agent for the Computing Center of the USSR Academy of Sciences who had a license for Tetris from Alexey Pajitnov, the game’s creator. During that trip, he met Alexey and