Kristen Gwinn-Becker, CEO of HistoryIT in South Portland, helps organizations preserve their histories by digitizing records through the company she founded. Gregory Rec/Staff Photographer

Thirteen years ago, Maine native Kristen Gwinn-Becker realized something it would take much of the world several years – and a global pandemic – to understand:

“If you’re not discoverable online, then for the majority of people, you don’t exist,” Gwinn-Becker said.

It was this 2011 realization that led Gwinn-Becker to launch HistoryIT, a tech company that helps organizations digitize their historical archives.

Organizations with important historical documents that exist only in waterlogged basements and dusty attics face the threat of fading into obscurity. That’s where HistoryIT comes in.

“Our mission is to save history. That is at the core of everything we do,” Gwinn-Becker said. “Everyone at the company believes two things: that history is important and that it’s in danger.”

The 46-year-old CEO and history scholar grew up in Levant, 10 miles southeast of Bangor. Gwinn-Becker graduated from the University of Maine with a degree in history at the age of 19, before spending a decade boomeranging around the world in pursuit of various career opportunities.

She earned a master’s degree at Trinity College Dublin, lived in Edinburgh, Scotland, moved back to the U.S., went to San Francisco to work in tech during the height of the dot-com boom, then headed to Washington, D.C., to get her Ph.D. in history from George Washington University – all before landing in Chicago in 2011.

While contemplating what she wanted to do with her doctorate, Gwinn-Becker was struck by the realization that access to historical archives is a privilege – one that takes time, money and resources.

To help make history accessible to a wider audience, she combined her dual skill sets in software development and history to come up with the idea for HistoryIT.

It works like this: First, HistoryIT’s staff assesses an organization’s assets, conducts interviews with clients and creates a plan of action for preservation. Next, they digitally preserve all of the archival materials using a state-of-the-art lab in South Portland. Odyssey, the company’s digital collections management software, then allows the team to tag documents and organize them into easily searchable online museums.

Maria Vargas, a digital preservation photographer at HistoryIT, places a photo under glass prior to making a digital image version of it at HistoryIT in South Portland. Gregory Rec/Staff Photographer

In 2015, the company brought Gwinn-Becker back to the state where it all started. She put down roots in Portland, proving correct her mother’s assertion that “we all come home again, no matter what we say when we’re 19.”

“It was just this moment of like, I’m running a moderately successful company at the time and I’m going to hire people,” Gwinn-Becker said. “That’s an opportunity to bring jobs back to the state to attract new talent to the state and to … live where I want to live and surround myself in this community and yet be able to conduct my passion.”

Recently, the company made the move from Portland’s Commercial Street to a larger facility on Gannett Drive in South Portland.

Since its conception, HistoryIT’s clients have spanned everything from Greek life organizations, to educational institutions, to museums and even NFL teams.

One such client is Pi Kappa Alpha, also known as PIKE, a national fraternity headquartered in Memphis, Tennessee. The fraternity’s leaders contacted Gwinn-Becker in 2018, seeking help organizing a massive, 150-year-old archive.

“We amassed a huge collection of paper and items that no one really had an opportunity to work with on a day-to-day basis. So basically, it was just stored for decades,” said Sandra Newsom, an archivist at Pi Kappa Alpha Historical Society. “So when we connected with HistoryIT, we had basements full of organized boxes. Some were in horrible shape due to environmental conditions.”

Newsom worked closely with Gwinn-Becker and her team to set up both physical and digital exhibits. PIKE has a membership of more than 300,000, and its online museum allows fraternity brothers to learn about the organization’s history without making the trip to Memphis.

And in Memphis, Newsom said, in a library that is often so packed with brothers that it becomes standing room only, she has witnessed firsthand the emotional impacts of history.

“A young man found his grandfather in a set of minutes,” Newsom said. “We just get such great feedback, and it’s so much fun to watch them be excited. We’ve had people come to tears.”

HistoryIT has cataloged more than 4.8 million records over the last year – and the company has no intention of slowing down anytime soon. Gwinn-Becker was honored as one of Inc. Magazine’s Female Founders 250 on April 9, becoming the first Mainer ever to be featured on the magazine’s list of up-and-coming women entrepreneurs.

“It’s a level of recognition that certainly historians don’t get that often in terms of in the business world, that it was only 250 people, that I was the only one from Maine,” Gwinn-Becker said. “It just supports this idea that we’re doing something important.”

On Gwinn-Becker’s mission to “#SaveHistory,” she is constantly traveling and meeting clients all over the U.S., but she is proud to call South Portland her home base.

“All kinds of amazing people … are creating and being successful in all types of businesses here in Maine,” Gwinn-Becker said.