Leslie "Young" Harvill

Leslie "Young" Harvill graduated from Evergreen in 1976. After graduation he stayed as an adjunct faculty and instructor of fine arts. He went on to receive a Masters in Fine Arts from Stanford. In 1985 he joined VPL, working on the first generation of virtual reality systems and becoming the co-inventor of the data glove.

From there, Young went on to co-found Paracomp, which produced the software Shockwave, and in 1989 Paracomp merged with Macromind to become Macromedia. In 1994 Young and a partner founded Pulse Entertainment. Young is the Chief Technology Officer of the corporation, which started out producing successful CD-ROM games such as Helix and Bad Mojo. In 1997 the company shifted its focus toward the Internet and created Pulse Creator and Pulse Player. These products allow artists, animators and web designers to produce talking characters and interactive product demos. Their in-house studio creates animation including Marvin the Martian for Entertaindom and Barbie for Mattel. In 2000 Red Herring named the company one of the top 100 private companies. The article noted that the company had received $20 million in venture capital from Time Warner and others. Pulse has grown significantly over the past year. Young is married to Ann Lasko-Harvill.