Dave Laughlin, '67
David M. Laughlin graduated from St. Benedict's College in 1967 with a degree in Business Administration. After college he spent two years in the U. S. Army.
After the army Dave ventured into the sales and marketing world spending three years with Johnson & Johnson and five years with Xerox. By 1977 the self-employment bug got him and he co-founded a Canon copier dealership in Kansas City. In 1983 he sold his dealership interest to his partners and founded an electronic circuit board repair shop that repaired electronic circuit board for all of the Canon dealers in the United States. He sold that business in 1999 to the employees by the way of an ESOP. During that same period he started a Panasonic board repair shop and a Hewlet Packard board and fuser rebuild shop. He sold his interest in both companies to his business partner in the later 1990's.
From the success of those businesses Dave, in 1996, moved to Scottsdale, Arizona, for eight months of the year. While in Scottsdale Dave got the bug to start another business. He, along with two young men, founded TechStar, Inc., a business providing temporary employees specializing in IT workers. Dave also spent time in the Kansas City area and in 2001 financed a medical software company. He and his two partners sold the business in 2010 to their largest customer, which is a publicly traded company.
Dave and his wife Sherri have been married 43 years and have three sons, Jeff 40, Steve 37, and Tim 35, and have six grandchildren. While raising their children Dave became very active in their sports lives and help found the Blue Valley Recreation Commission. Before the Rec Commission was founded Dave was president of the Blue Valley Baseball Club and the Blue Valley Basketball Club and was a volunteer head of these two sports that provided baseball and softball for 4,000 boys and girls and basketball for 1,500. In 2013, Dave and Sherri sold their Arizona home to be closer to their children and grandchildren in Overland Park. Dave spends his time chasing the little white ball around the golf course and chasing his grandchildren.
