Class Notes: ECE

I lead the Product Management team and a Software Engineering product group in the public cloud business at Rackspace.

I first applied my Electrical Engineering degree from Cornell in microprocessor hardware design then Technical Marketing at AMD. I transitioned to Product Management at Microsoft then Amazon Web Services (AWS) after getting my MBA from the Kellogg School at Northwestern University.

In moving across different tech industry areas, I've benefitted quite a bit from the broad-based engineering education I got at Cornell. In my role at Rackspace, I am leveraging my engineering background from Cornell and experience developed in hardware, software, and cloud service businesses in building out our product portfolio.

There aren't enough data scientists to go around-unless you automate them.  http://www.technologyreview.com/lists/innovators-under-35/2014/entrepreneur/michael-schmidt/

I started my career at Eastman Kodak Company working as an embedded software engineer for document products. Early on, I became the commercialization manager for the first high-speed color document scanner and continued on to lead a team to develop a whole platform of lower cost yet high performing document scanners that won numerous industry awards.

I transitioned into business management and doubled our Distributed Scanner business in two years to $50M. After this I spent some time in Kodak's research labs leading a team developing ultra high-speed inkjet printing technology that is now part of a $250M business before shifting back to the "dark side" of business strategy.

Today, I simultaneously lead strategy as well as business analytics for the company. Looking back it is clear that my experiences at Cornell helped me to see how to successfully bring new technology to market to create value and help people, which after all, are the same thing. Looking forward, there are far more opportunities for Cornell grads than I ever dreamed of when I was a student, all there for the taking.

Fernando J. Garcia BS '90, MEng '91, MBA '92

Loving the Bay Area (except for the imminent drought) and working at Salesforce in post-sales relationship and product adoption. Two young ones (2.5/4.5) take most of my time, but trying to stay active and social.

I have had a good career combining my Cornell EE degree and Harvard MBA as have been engaged in financial roles in Technology companies since moving to the Silicon Valley Area during the 70s. This remains a hotbed of innovation and I have had a firsthand view and owe much of my success to the training I received at Cornell Engineering. I have had CFO roles at a diverse set of Tech companies, including Semiconductor (VLSI Technology and Cypress), Database (Sybase), Internet (@Home Network), Applications (Siebel Systems), Security (Fortinet), and now Internet again, as CFO of Yahoo!. All have been fun and rewarding roles. Also I have been on the boards of Yahoo! Japan; Infinera, Inc.; NXP Semiconductor; Gigamon; and several private companies and nonprofits. I have taken three companies public.

I continue to see the benefits of a strong engineering background and especially CS, as hiring out here for these roles remains strong.  Feel free to get in touch.