Speaker Biographies

May 2010

Will be announced in the spring.

 

May 2009

Commencement speaker: Eric E. Schmidt, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer, Google, Inc.

Baccalaureate Speaker: Rev. Dr. Kirk Byron Jones, Professor of Ethics and Preaching, Andover Newton Theological School, Newton, MA

 

Eric E. Schmidt, May 2009 Commencement Speaker:

Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer, Google, Inc.

Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin recruited Eric Schmidt from Novell, where he led that company's strategic planning, management and technology development as chairman and CEO. Since coming to Google in 2001, Mr. Schmidt has focused on building the corporate infrastructure needed to maintain Google's rapid growth as a company and on ensuring that quality remains high while product development cycle times are kept to a minimum. Along with Mr. Page and Mr. Brin, Mr. Schmidt shares responsibility for Google's day-to-day operations. Mr. Schmidt's Novell experience culminated a 20-year record of achievement as an Internet strategist, entrepreneur and developer of great technologies. His well-seasoned perspective perfectly complements Google's needs as a young and rapidly growing search engine with a unique corporate culture.

Prior to his appointment at Novell, Mr. Schmidt was chief technology officer and corporate executive officer at Sun Microsystems, Inc., where he led the development of Java, Sun's platform-independent programming technology, and defined Sun's Internet software strategy. Before joining Sun in 1983, he was a member of the research staff at the Computer Science Lab at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center and held positions at Bell Laboratories and Zilog. Mr. Schmidt has a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Princeton University  and a master's and Ph.D. in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley. In 2006, he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering, which recognized his work on "the development of strategies for the world's most successful Internet search engine company." He was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences as a Fellow in 2007. He is also chairman of the board of directors for the New America Foundation.