Senior CVs
Lucy Freeman
How did the top bosses of IT get where they are and how does your career so far compare with theirs? We've put together some senior CVs for you to see
Jump to:
Bill Gates, chairman and chief software architect, Microsoft Corporation
Michael Dell, chairman and CEO, Dell
Carly Fiorina, chairman and CEO, Hewlett-Packard
Steven Jobs, chairman and CEO, Apple Computers
John Chambers, president and CEO, Cisco Systems
Sam Palmisano, president and CEO, IBM
Andrew Grove, chairman of the board, Intel
Lawrence Ellison, chairman and CEO, Oracle
David Rippon, professor, Buckinghamshire Chilterns University College
 |
| William (Bill) H Gates |
|
| Chairman and chief software architect, Microsoft Corporation |
| Age: 47 |
| Education: Lakeside School, Harvard University (dropped out in junior year) |
| Base salary: Unknown, but net worth is $51bn |
Career path:
Began programming computers in 1968, aged 13
Joined Harvard in 1972 as a pre-law student and signed up for one of its toughest maths courses
A year later, Gates and his friend Paul Allen contacted the head of MITS and said they could provide a version of the programming language BASIC for the company's first microcomputer, the MITS Altair 8800. After a demonstration, MITS contracted Gates and Allen to provide programming languages
Began Microsoft (at that time Micro-soft) with Paul Allen on 4 April 1975
In 1980, IBM asked Gates to provide an operating system for its first personal computer. Gates purchased a system called QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System) for $50,000 from another company, changed the name to MS-DOS, and licensed it to IBM
Microsoft was incorporated on 25 June 1981and Gates became a paper billionaire
Founded Corbis in 1989 to develop one of the world's largest resources of visual information - a comprehensive digital archive of art and photography from public and private collections around the globe
His book, The Road Ahead, was published in 1995 and held the top spot on the New York Times' bestseller list for seven weeks
He currently sits on the board of ICOS, a company that specialises in protein-based and small-molecule therapeutics, and is an investor in a number of other biotechnology companies
In the financial year ending June 2001 Microsoft had revenues of $25.3bn and employed more than 40,000 people in 60 countries
Gates believes that everybody must understand the changes that inexpensive computing and inexpensive communications will bring. "Everybody in society, not just the technologists, must debate the nature and pace of change"
He is married to Melinda and has two children, Jennifer and Rory
|
| Michael S Dell |
|
| Chairman and chief executive officer, Dell |
| Age: 36 |
| Education: The University of Texas at Austin (but left to found Dell) |
| Base salary: $850,000 in salary, $1.67m in bonuses |
Career path:
He took apart an Apple II computer that his parents had bought him to see how it worked at the age of 15
Founded Dell in 1984 from his college dorm room with $1,000, selling computer systems directly to customers
Opened the first international subsidiary in the UK in the 1987
Launched a price war with higher-cost computer makers in the early 1990s, which eventually forced rival Compaq to oust its chief executive and scramble to find its own low-cost strategy
Dell became the best-performing US stock through the 1990s and the top PC brand in the US, Canada, UK and Ireland
Became the youngest chief executive of a company ever to earn a ranking on the Fortune 500 in 1992
Sold more workstations than any other competitor in 2000, with the strategy of taking orders directly from customers and keeping only about five days' worth of inventory in his warehouses and keeping annual write-offs for excess and obsolete inventory down to 0.1%
He is a member of the executive committee of the World Business Council, vice chairman of the US Business Council, chairman of the Computer Systems Policy Project, and serves on the US president's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology
He was included in Time/CNN's list of the 25 most influential global executives in 2001, named the 2001 chief executive of the year by Chief Executive Magazine, "entrepreneur of the year" by Inc magazine, "man of the year" by PC Magazine, and "CEO of the year" by Financial World and Industry Week magazines
His achievements at Dell include managing 34,600 employees around the globe, an increase in sales growth over 18 years from $6m to $31.2bn and, in 1998, a rise in sales in Asia of 34% while the rest of the industry was struggling in the Far East
Dell's current challenge is to expand into services, storage and networking, which now make up about 20% of revenue
He is married with four children
|
| Carleton S (Carly) Fiorina |
|
| Chairman and chief executive officer of Hewlett-Packard Company |
| Age: 47 |
| Education: BA Hons in medieval history and philosophy from Stanford University; MBA from the Robert H Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland; and an MSc from MIT's Sloan School |
| Base salary: $1m |
Career path:
Became an account director with AT&T in 1979 and worked her way up to head its North American operations at 40
1993 saw her launch a bold $90m brand-building campaign that helped transform the phone equipment maker into an internet player
She managed the highly successful Lucent spin-off from AT&T in 1996 and was promoted to president of Lucent's $19bn global service-provider business in 1998
She was appointed chief executive of Hewlett-Packard in July 1999, making her the first woman to head a Dow 30 company and the first outsider in 60 years to be picked for a top job at Hewlett-Packard
She was named an honorary fellow of the London Business School in July 2001 and serves as a board member for the Kellogg Company, Cisco Systems, Merck & Company and Cisco Systems
She jointly led the HP-Compaq merger with Compaq Computer Corp chief Michael Capellas in April 2002
Fiorina is married and has two stepdaughters
Her challenge for the coming months is to strike a delicate balance between jazzing up HP's stodgy culture and maintaining its reputation for good, old-fashioned dependability
|
| Steven Jobs |
|
| Chairman and chief executive officer of Apple Computers Inc |
| Age: 47 |
| Education: Reed College, Portland Oregon (dropped out after one semester) |
| Salary: $1 per annum (says "it's not about the money") but has stock options potentially worth $548m to $1.4bn |
Career path:
Became a video game designer at Atari Inc, a pioneer in electronic arcade recreation, in 1974
Designed the Apple I computer with Steve Wozniak in his own bedroom in 1976 and built the prototype in his garage. A local electronics equipment retailer ordered 25
Designed the Apple II, the "Volkswagon of computers" in 1977
Introduced the Apple III in 1981, which proved a failure
Engineered a marketing campaign introducing the Macintosh as "a computer for the rest of us" in 1984
Resigned as chairman of Apple at the age of 30 at a board meeting in 1985, saying "I've been thinking a lot and it's time for me to get on with my life." Sold $20m of his Apple stock
Tried again in 1989 with a new hardware company called NextStep, which closed down in 1993 after $250m had been invested in it, but restarted selling software
Is now chairman and CEO of Apple Computers and Pixar, the makers of both Toy Story movies, and is trying to lead another revolution in software development, for corporate developers to use the object-oriented paradigm to solve the time and money problems in software development
Lives close to the apricot orchards where he grew up, with his wife and three of his four children, in the area now known as Silicon Valley
|
| John Chambers |
|
| President and chief executive of Cisco Systems |
| Age: 52 |
| Education: Bachelor's degree in business from West Virginia University; MBA from Indiana University, 1975 |
| Base salary: $323,300, holdings of Cisco stock are worth more than $1bn |
Career path:
Started at IBM in the sales department in January 1976 and stayed for six years
Began an eight-year stint at Wang Laboratories in 1983, heading its Asian sales department
Was brought into Cisco Systems in 1991 as its top sales and operations executive
Became Cisco chief executive and president in January 1995
Chambers grew Cisco from $1.2bn in annual revenues to its current run-rate of approximately $20bn. When he became CEO, Cisco had a market capitalisation of $9bn. Today it's 54 times that - $579bn. In other words, Chambers has presided over the creation of more than $480bn in stockholder value
Cisco overtook Microsoft as the most valuable business on earth in March 2000
Described in Upside Magazine as "the top titan of the digital world" and in Worth Magazine as the number two CEO in America in April 1999
A member of former President Clinton's Committee for Trade Policy and was selected to serve on President George W Bush's transition team as a member of his Education Committee
Chambers still spends more than 30 hours a week meeting customers
He is committed to playing a key role in shaping the internet economy. In 1997, Cisco conducted one-third of the world's electronic commerce. Currently more than 90% of Cisco's orders are transacted over the internet
Suffers from dyslexia, is married and has two children
|
| Sam Palmisano |
|
| President and chief executive of International Business Machines Corp (IBM) |
| Age: 50 |
| Education: John Hopkins University |
| Base salary: $793,750 |
Career path:
An IBM lifer, Palmisano joined as a salesman in 1973 in his hometown of Baltimore, Maryland
He moved into the data processing group, became executive assistant to former CEO John Akers, then became IBM Japan's senior managing director of operations. He was also senior vice president and group executive for both IBM's global services and personal systems group
As senior vice president and group executive for IBM's enterprise systems group, he led IBM's adoption of the Linux operating environment and the launch of the company's unified eServer family
He became president and chief executive officer in 2002
Among his achievements at IBM are increasing revenues by nearly 30% to $32.2bn
|
| Andrew S Grove |
|
| Chairman of the board, Intel Corporation |
| Age: 66 |
| Education: Graduated from the City College of New York with a Bachelor of Chemical Engineering degree, received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley in 1963 |
| Salary: Unknown |
Career path:
Joined the Research and Development Laboratory of Fairchild Semiconductor in 1963
Became assistant director of research and development and wrote his first book, Physics and Technology of Semiconductor Devices in 1967
Participated in the founding of Intel Corporation in July 1968
Was named as its president in 1979
Named chief executive officer in 1987 and his book, One-on-One With Andy Grove, was published
Another book, Only the Paranoid Survive, was published by Doubleday in September 1996
Named chairman and CEO and won the "man of the year" award from Time magazine in May 1997
Relinquished his CEO title in 1998 but remains chairman of the board
Currently lectures at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, teaching a course entitled "Strategy and Action in the Information Processing Industry"
|
| Lawrence J Ellison |
|
| Chairman and chief executive officer of Oracle Corporation |
| Education: Failed the University of Chicago mathematics degree and dropped out |
| Age: 58 |
| Salary: Unknown, but net worth is upward of $50bn. Has just negotiated a deal to give up his CEO salary in exchange for Oracle stock options |
Career path:
Taught himself programming and held various mainframe programmer roles at Omex, Ampex and Amdahl
Saw the potential of IBM's creation of SQL in the emerging market for Unix systems in 1970
Used his own money to co-found Software Development Laboratories in 1977, which eventually became Oracle
The first version of Oracle was sold and installed in November 1979. Ellison went on the road for five weeks, doing the installation and training himself
Decided in 1988 that Oracle software was going to be compatible with massively parallel computers, and used it to deliver the first version of the Oracle media server - a database system that manages conventional information and operates transactions on those, as well as huge amounts of text and their related images
Sits on the board of Apple Computer and the Diane Fossey Gorilla Fund
Is known as a world champion sailboat racer, sports nut, jet pilot, ruthless businessman, marketing genius and avant-garde thinker
Established and supports The Ellison Medical Foundation, which supports research into aging and global infectious disease
Is currently managing the redefinition of key parts of Oracle's business, which has left him directly in charge of many aspects of the company for the first time in years
|
| David Rippon | |
|
| Professor of IT Infrastructure Management, Buckinghamshire Chilterns University College | |
| Age: 53 | |
| Education: Aylesbury Grammar School, University College London | |
| Base Salary: Undisclosed | |
Career path:
Joined Massey-Ferguson as a graduate trainee in 1973, following the then-normal career path of programmer, analyst and project manager, working primarily on manufacturing systems
Appointed systems manager in 1982. Was responsible for commercial and financial systems between then and 1987, including installation of an orders management system into the UK, France and the US
Promoted to director of management information systems in 1987, where his chief remit was to develop and implement an IT strategy in support of the annual business plan. Key achievements include replacing the existing manufacturing systems with next generation MRP2 supportive software, and developing PC-based systems to facilitate teamwork between the various departments
Left Massey-Ferguson in 1993 to become IT director with Land Securities, a FTSE 100 company in property investment. Oversaw the replacement of mainframe systems, a £16m project requiring over 100 staff at peak times. Key initiatives included managing user expectations through a board steering committee; achieving cost effectiveness through use of third party software and outsourcing; and early business benefits through a phased approach
Current remit at Buckinghamshire Chilterns University College is to create a world-class research school in applied computing
Extra-curricular IT activities include being a fellow of the British Computer Society and chairman of its IT Directors' Forum; and being a frequent conference speaker
What are employers asking for? Find IT vacancies here
Back to top
|
