Cool Person of the Day

Even as the recession in the United States persists, there are still some fields that are still employing highly-educated individuals.  In the tech sector, one of the most coveted and competitive positions for new graduates is the position of software engineer.  The online data storage company, Dropbox, continues to hire software engineers.  Just what are they looking for?  You have to be as smart, versatile and fun as Tina Wen!

Tina Wen is a software engineer at Dropbox and a recent graduate of MIT.  With her B.S. and Master’s degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Microsoft quickly hired Tina Wen.  Intrigued by her thesis on bandwidth-sensitive oblivious routing, Microsoft put Wen on the team that developed Microsoft Outlook for Mac.  If you have Microsoft’s Office for Mac 2011 edition, you have some of Wen’s software!  Working as a software developer engineer was a nice step up for Wen at Microsoft; she had a summer internship there working on script tests for Microsoft TV the summer before she finished her Master’s.

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Brilliant ideas often need to come at the right time in order for it to be recognized.  Occasionally, there is an invention in the tech sector that fails simply because the marketplace was not ready for it or the supporting technologies did not exist to make it a success.  But the success of online digital photo editor Picnik is the result of a good idea hitting the marketplace at precisely the right time.  Much of the credit for Picnik’s success, then, comes from co-founder Mike Harrington.

At one point in his career, Mike Harrington was best known for the immensely popular video game Half-Life.  Harrington was the lead programmer for Half-Life and he was a co-founder of Valve, the software company that produced Half-Life.  Prior to starting Valve with Gabe Newell, Harrington was a software developer for Microsoft.  His work in the tech sector began in 1985 when he went to work for Dynamix as a programmer.  Following the success of Half-Life, Harrington took a sabbatical and traveled with his wife.

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It is a tough thing for a company when the chief product that business creates is past its peak in the marketplace.  Many companies actively attempt to keep the truth about their product’s chances of survival in the market concealed from investors in order to continue the struggle for market dominance.  Not so at TomTom, the satellite navigation company.  Impaired by cheaper hardware flooding the market and similar, free, software offered by Google, TomTom has experienced a few rough years.  Fortunately, TomTom has Marina Wyatt.

Marina Wyatt is the Chief Financial Officer of TomTom.  Wyatt was hired as CFO immediately before TomTom made its initial public offering for stock in 2005 and she has remained with the company ever since.  Marina Wyatt came to TomTom with an impressive resume.  As a graduate of Cambridge University and a first job as a chartered accountant, one might assume Wyatt’s education was strongly rooted in finance.  Actually, her degree was in geography and it was not until she joined the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales that her interests turned to economics.  Her accounting jobs led her to positions at Psion, Symbian, and finally COLT Telcom Group.  As CFO of COLT Telecom Group, Wyatt gained the real-world experience she needed to be a vital hire for TomTom.

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One of the dangers in starting a new social networking platform is that users will not flock to it simply because they do not understand what the network offers.  While that is primarily an issue for a marketing department, each new social network needs a hook, an angle unique from the other social networks that delivers something new to the Internet.  For that, new social networks need a decent Chief Product Officer, who helps determine what the Internet site actually offers to users and programmers who want to develop applications on their network.  As a relative newcomer to the social networking market, Klout has Chris Makarsky.

Chris Makarsky took a winding road to get to Klout and his career path was a somewhat uncommon one for a man who has risen to be Chief Product Officer of an Internet company.  While studying Economics and Psychology at the University of Virginia, Makarsky took an internship working for the Federal Trade Commission.  After getting his two B.S. degrees, he took a year off from school and went to work for Musictoday.  While working for the ticket vendor Musictoday, Chris Makarsky was intrigued by management techniques and after a year, he returned to the University of Virginia to begin his Master’s work.  In 2007, Chris Makarsky graduated with a Master’s of Science in Management of IT.  Armed with that degree, he was immediately hired by Yahoo! as a product manager.

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Every company in the technology sector has a strategy and few companies have been as open about their outlook for the market as Nokia.  Nokia, the mobile phone manufacturer, is widely attributed with connecting one billion people to cellular networks through their innovative and popular devices.  Recently, Nokia unveiled its “Next Billion” Strategy.  While their stated goal is clear – Nokia wants to be the supplier for another billion mobile phone customers – their exact strategy to reach the goal is not as evident.  However, it is Mary T. McDowell who will be responsible for achieving the Next Billion goal!

Mary T. McDowell is the Executive Vice President of Mobile Phones at Nokia.  This means that the ultimate decisions and responsibilities for all things having to do with mobile phones at Nokia fall upon her.  While Nokia’s CEO plays an important role in achieving the Next Billion Strategy, McDowell’s marketing prowess with mobile phones will go a long way toward determining the success or failure of the plan.  Given that McDowell was the executive that shepherded the popular and wildly successful E-Series mobile phone from Nokia to the global marketplace (well in advance of the current CEO taking that position), it looks like McDowell is more than up to the task.

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As companies rise and fall in Silicon Valley, it is no surprise that the big tech companies frequently see employees migrate from one popular company to the next big thing.  While some of the big tech companies actively poach employees from their competitors, other tech companies seem to just attract a lot of employees from the companies with greater name recognition.  In the case of StumbleUpon, the comparatively small Internet company has a surprisingly high number of employees formerly employed at Google.  One of the most significant ex-Google workers who is now vital to StumbleUpon is Japjit Tulsi.

Japjit Tulsi made a lateral move in 2011 when he became StumbleUpon’s Vice President of Engineering from being Google’s Director of Engineering.  While at Google, Tulsi was responsible for creating Google Analytics, which is one of the standard-bearers of online traffic analysis.  That level of programming genius made him very attractive to StumbleUpon.  Prior to Google, Japjit Tulsi was a part of Microsoft’s executive development program.  At Microsoft, Tulsi served as a group manager in the engineering department.  Prior to Microsoft, Tulsi studied at Punjab University where he abandoned a law career in favor of the tech sector.

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In big technology companies like Microsoft, it is a rare thing for an executive in the Customer Service branch to make the mainstream news.  In fact, it is hard to make a splash in customer service such that you get noticed within the industry at all.  Customer service defines the old adage of “no news is good news;” if a customer service department is doing their job efficiently then you seldom hear about them.  But in 2010, one corporate officer in the technology sector’s customer service division stood out.  That person was Barbara Gordon and she boldly challenged Google to rise to the level of customer service Microsoft delivers!

Barbara Gordon serves as the Corporate Vice President for Customer Service and Support for the Microsoft Corporation.  In 2010, she wrote a blog that became famous in the technology industry.  The article, Microsoft’s Support Sets Us Apart, garnered mainstream media attention by boldly calling out Google for its lack of customer service options.  While some in the industry characterized the gambit as brazen, Gordon used the media attention to constructively criticize Google while touting the strong customer service department at Microsoft.  When Google floundered in its response – even now it offers easy access only to Internet customer service support – Gordon’s risky public statement paid off for Microsoft.

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Demand Media had a pretty rough 2011, though its Fourth Quarter earnings were actually better than expected.  A provider of videos, blogs, and other media over the Internet, Demand Media has been working to transform the way people use the Internet for education and entertainment.  While the company has been growing, Demand Media’s Board has been buying back its stock and the company is not quite where the executives and analysts thought it would be.  Dave Panos is the man who will change the direction of Demand Media!

Dave Panos is the Chief Strategy Officer of Demand Media and his plans for the company are ambitious.  Because Demand Media is known for delivering original Internet video content the company is in competition with many distribution channels, like YouTube.  Panos organized a strategic partnership with competitor CoverItLive.  By pairing Demand Media and CoverItLive, Panos helped increase the video base of Demand Media dramatically, which allows Demand Media to reach a much wider audience.  Having the vision to partner with potentially vulnerable competitors is part of what makes Panos a truly great Chief Strategy Officer.

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Corporate executives of major companies have a lot on their plates; that is the nature of the position.  Because of the burdens of the industry, technology companies have additional stresses and responsibilities that add to the CEO’s responsibilities.  As a result, the very best CEOs in the technology sector tend to hire a close cadre of people whom they can trust absolutely.  The CEO relies upon these close corporate officers to oversee the minutiae while they focus on the big picture for a company.  Usually, one of the key hires to make a tech sector CEO successful is the hiring of a head of human resources.  Mark Pincus of Zynga certainly qualifies as successful and part of his success comes from his reliance upon Colleen McCreary.

Colleen McCreary is the Chief People Officer of Zynga.  In that role, McCreary frees up CEO Mark Pincus to worry about things other than the staff of Zynga.  As Chief People Officer, Colleen McCreary is the woman to see about applying for jobs and all other human resource issues at Zynga.  McCreary has been with Zynga since 2009 and helped the company staff up as the Facebook games Zynga produces became more popular.

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The Internet truly has made the world smaller in many ways.  With communications over the Internet happening virtually instantaneously, the people of the world are more interconnected than ever.  This interconnection between geographically and culturally different people is especially evident on Internet social networks.  Just because the connectivity between people exists in the Internet does not necessarily mean that it is well-understood.  To understand the real impact of online activity, one needs impressive analytical tools like those offered by Gnip.  Gnip needs Chris Moody.

Chris Moody joined Gnip in the middle of 2011.  Hired by CEO Jud Valeski, Moody assumed the dual roles of President of Gnip and Chief Operating Officer.  In the two executive positions, Moody essentially runs day-to-day operations of Gnip.  Chris Moody is directly responsible for the company’s development and while Valeski and the Board of Directors determine the overall direction of Gnip, it is Moody who is responsible for managing the company to get it there!

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