2026 Hall of Fame Inductees
Presented By: CIBC
Mitch Free
Founder & CEO
ZYCI
Mitch Free has spent more than three decades at the intersection of shop-floor expertise and strategic vision. He began as a CNC machinist, moved into aircraft acquisition and overhaul at Northwest Airlines, and then built MFG.com — the pioneering online marketplace for custom manufacturing that attracted investment from Jeff Bezos and transformed how OEMs source precision parts worldwide. He later founded Fast Radius, a global digital manufacturing company built around additive technology in partnership with UPS — and earned the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award along the way.
Today he leads ZYCI, a precision CNC machining company in Chamblee, Georgia, producing flight-critical components for aerospace and defense customers including SpaceX, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and Airbus. Mitch is also a published author and a sought-after voice on manufacturing innovation and aerospace supply chains. Few people in the industry have made the full journey — from the machinist's bench to the boardroom to the frontier — and kept building at every stop. Congratulations, Mitch!
Barrington Irving
Founder
Experience Aviation & The Flying Classroom
In 2007, at age 23, Captain Barrington Irving became the youngest person — and the first Black pilot — to fly solo around the world. His 97-day, 24,600-mile journey in a single-engine Columbia 400 he named Inspiration earned him a Guinness World Record and a platform he has been building on ever since. Born in Kingston, Jamaica and raised in inner-city Miami, Barrington had once seen a football scholarship as his only path forward — until a Jamaican airline captain became his mentor and changed the course of his life entirely.
He has spent the years since making sure that story doesn't stay rare. Irving founded Experience Aviation to bring STEM-based programs and career guidance to middle and high school students, and later created The Flying Classroom — a K-12 STEM curriculum that has reached students across 13 countries through 16 global expeditions. His legacy isn't the flight alone. It's every young person who looked up — and decided they belonged in the sky — because he did first.
Dan Van Horn
Founder & President
U.S. Kids Golf
Dan Van Horn didn't start a company — he solved a problem. When his young children lost interest in golf because their clubs were simply too heavy to swing, the former golf professional and engineer developed a line of clubs up to 30% lighter than standard equipment. That insight became U.S. Kids Golf, founded in 1997, and today the company is the world's leading provider of youth golf equipment — offering nine fitted sizes across multiple club lines, sized by height rather than age.
What grew around that product is equally significant. Dan built a tournament platform that now runs more than 1,600 events annually across 60-plus markets, culminating each year in a World Championship at Pinehurst. He established the U.S. Kids Golf Foundation, purchased and transformed Longleaf Golf & Family Club into a living laboratory for youth instruction, and helped bring a generation of children and their families into the game. His legacy is measured in every golfer who might never have picked up a club without him.