John S. Chen - Blackberry Ceo

John S. Chen (Chinese: 程守宗; pinyin: Chéng ShÇ'uzōng; Jyutping: cing⁴ sau² zung¹; born July 1, 1955) is a Hong Kong-born British-American businessman and chief executive officer of BlackBerry Ltd. Previously, he served as the chief executive officer and president of Sybase, an independent software vendor specializing in data management, analytics, and mobility technology. He is currently a director of Wells Fargo & Company and Walt Disney Company.

Early life and education

A native of Hong Kong, Chen studied at La Salle College in Hong Kong until Form 5, before coming to the United States and graduating from Northfield Mount Hermon School, a preparatory school in Northfield, Massachusetts. He went on to graduate from Brown University in 1978 with a B.S., magna cum laude in electrical engineering, and in 1979, with an M.S. in electrical engineering from CalTech.

Career

Chen began his career in 1979 as a design engineer with Unisys, where he eventually served as vice president and general manager of, in turn, the Convergent RISC Platform Division and the Convergent UNIX Systems Group. In 1991 he joined Pyramid Technology Corporation as executive vice president. Chen was elected president, chief operating officer and a director of Pyramid in 1993, serving until 1995.

Chen next joined Siemens Nixdorf as a vice president in 1995. He was promoted to president and chief executive officer of Siemens Nixdorf's Open Enterprise Computing Division in 1996.

Chen became CEO of Sybase in 1998. As John Gallant and Eric Knorr noted in IT World, Sybase had been a strong competitor of Oracle, but had become a "dead company" after failing to enter the market for enterprise applications, as Oracle had; Chen and his team proceeded to reinvent Sybase as an "enabler of the 'unwired enterprise'". In so doing, Chen and his team led a re-invention strategy that moved the mature, slower growth technology company into being a high-growth innovator, valued at US $6B in 2010. This involved improving its balance sheet and returning Sybase to profitability, including by leveraging its existing database knowledge to create new products to address the emerging markets for analytics and mobility. Sybase achieved strong financial performance and shareholder returns under Chen’s leadership, including 55 consecutive quarters of profitability, $2.8 billion of cash generated, and a 28 percent compound annual growth rate of its market capitalization (fr om a low of $362 million to $5.8 billion through 2010). Sybase was acquired in 2010 by SAP AG.

Board and trustee appointments

Chen was appointed executive chairman of the board and interim CEO of BlackBerry Ltd in November 2013, responsible for the company's strategic direction, strategic relationships and organizational goals. He was elected a director of the Walt Disney Company in 2004 and of Wells Fargo & Company in 2006, and as of September 2016 maintains stock holdings in both companies valued in the single-digit millions of dollars. He has also served on the board of the CIT Group Inc., and as a member of the New York Stock Exchange’s listing advisory committee, as well as the boards of several high-tech start-ups, including Beyond.com, Niku Corporation, Wafer Technology, and Turbolinux US.

International relations

Chen is actively involved in international relations. U.S. President George W. Bush appointed Chen to serve on the President's Export Council (in 2005), and as co-chair of the Secure Borders and Open Doors Advisory Committee. He has testified before Congress on U.S.-China trade relations.

Additionally, Chen chaired the U.S.-China Policy Advisory Roundtable for the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

He serves as a trustee of the Brookings Institution, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Awards

Chen has been an invited member, since 1997, of the Committee of 100 (C-100) organisation of "Extraordinary Chinese Americans."

The Brown University School of Engineering awarded Chen its Brown Engineering Alumni Medal (BEAM) in 2003.

In July 2007, Sybase announced that Chen, its CEO, had been awarded the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year for Northern California.

Chen has also received awards from the US-Asia Institute (2009), the U.S.-China Policy Foundation, and the California-Asia Business Council (2007). In addition, the U.S.-Pan Asian American Chamber of Commerce Education Foundation has recognized Chen for his corporate board work.

Chen was awarded an honorary professorship from Shanghai University, and honorary doctorates from San Jose State University, City University of Hong Kong, and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

Personal life

As of 2016, Chen was a trustee of Caltech and of the charitable organisation, The First Tee, and a governor of the San Francisco Symphony.

Further reading

• Silcoff, Sean (February 24, 2014). "Exclusive: John Chen's Simple Plan to Save BlackBerry". The Globe and Mail. Toronto. Retrieved 29 September 2016. 
• StockNewsDesk Staff (September 27, 2014). "Blackberry's New CEO John Chen's Influence on Wall Street Earnings". StockNewsDesk.com. Retrieved September 29, 2016. 

References

External links

• "[Sybase-presented biography of John S. Chen]" (PDF). Retrieved June 18, 2012. 
• "John S. Chen - The Walt Disney Company". thewaltdisneycompany.com. Retrieved 29 September 2016. 
• "John S. Chen Biography - Board of Directors - Wells Fargo". wellsfargo.com. Retrieved 29 September 2016. 
• "Who exactly is the Interim BlackBerry CEO John S. Chen? - Blackberry Empire". blackberryempire.com. Retrieved 29 September 2016.