Jan 29, 2008 - Claremont, Calif. - The public lecture series associated with the 2008 Walter and Leonore Annenberg Visiting Professorships of Leadership and Management have been announced. The following free lectures will be held in Galileo Hall on the Harvey Mudd College campus, beginning at 7 p.m., with the exception of the John Benediktsson lecture on April 22, which will be held in the Green Room in the Platt Campus Center. A dessert reception will follow.

February 26
"Technology Leadership and Decision Making at Intel Corporation"
Justin R. Rattner
V.P. and Senior Fellow
Director, Corporate Technology Group and
Intel Chief Technology Officer

You can watch this lecture via live web streaming. 

Justin Rattner is responsible for leading Intel's microprocessor, communications and systems technology labs and Intel research. In 1989, Rattner was named Scientist of the Year by R&D Magazine for his leadership in parallel and distributed computer architecture. In December 1996, Rattner was featured as Person of the Week by ABC World News for his visionary work on the Department of Energy ASCI Red System, the first computer to sustain one trillion operations per second (one teraFLOPS) and the fastest computer in the world between 1996 and 2000. In 1997, Rattner was honored as one of the Computing 200, the 200 individuals having the greatest impact on the U.S. computer industry today, and subsequently profiled in the book Wizards and Their Wonders from ACM Press.

Rattner has received two Intel Achievement Awards for his work in high performance computing and advanced cluster communication architecture. He is a longstanding member of Intel's Research Council and Academic Advisory Council. He currently serves as the Intel executive sponsor for Cornell University where he serves on the External Advisory Board for the School of Engineering. Rattner joined Intel in 1973. He was named its first principal engineer in 1979 and its fourth Intel fellow in 1988. Prior to joining Intel, Rattner held positions with Hewlett-Packard Company and Xerox Corporation. He received his bachelor's and master's degrees from Cornell University in electrical engineering and computer science in 1970 and 1972, respectively.

March 11
"The Road Not Taken: The Decision Challenges of a CEO"
Penny Herscher
President and CEO FirstRain

You can watch this lecture via live web streaming.

Herscher joined FirstRain in 2004 with the mission to solve the qualitative information overload problem of the institutional investor. She has developed FirstRain as the leading search-driven research provider to the financial services market.

Prior to FirstRain, Herscher was chairman and CEO of Simplex Solutions where she led the company to an IPO and through the sale to Cadence Design Systems. She continued at Cadence as chief marketing officer and general manager of a major division. An executive at Synopsys, Herscher started her career as an R&D engineer with Texas Instruments, then Daisy Systems.

Herscher serves on the boards of FirstRain, Rambus, the Anita Borg Institute, Planned Parenthood Mar Monte and California Community Partners for Youth. She speaks on entrepreneurship, career management and technology challenges and has given talks at Berkeley, Stanford, BU and Santa Clara business schools as well as for numerous industry organizations and women's career development organizations. She holds a B.A. with honors in mathematics from Cambridge University in England.

April 8
"Making Tough Decisions: A Daily Business Experience"
John Schwarz
Chief Executive Officer, Business Objects

Since joining Business Objects in September 2005, Schwarz has overseen seven successful acquisitions, including Cartesis and Firstlogic, and driven revenue growth to over 1.2 billion in revenue. He has also led the creation of several business units such as Mid-Market and On Demand, which have contributed to the company's success.

Schwarz was formerly president and chief operating officer of Symantec Corporation. While at Symantec, he played a key role in growing the business to more than triple in size from under one billion to more than 2.7 billion in revenue and was instrumental in the successful combination of Symantec and VERITAS. Prior to Symantec, Schwarz spent 25 years at IBM Corporation, working in development, manufacturing, sales and marketing. His last position was general manager of IBM's Industry Solutions unit, a worldwide organization focused on building business applications and related services for IBM's large industry customers.

Schwarz currently also serves as a director of the Synopsys Corporation. He holds a diploma in business administration from the University of Toronto and a degree in computer science from the University of Manitoba. In 2004, he received an honorary Ph.D. from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

April 15
"Managing Innovation: A Perspective From Industrial Research"
Prabhakar Raghavan
SVP and Head, Yahoo! Research

Prabhakar Raghavan has been the head of Yahoo! Research since 2005. His research interests include text and web mining, and algorithm design. He is a consulting professor of computer science at Stanford University and editor-in-chief of the Journal of the ACM. He has co-authored two textbooks, on randomized algorithms and on information retrieval. Raghavan received his Ph.D. from U.C. Berkeley and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a fellow of the ACM and of the IEEE. Prior to joining Yahoo!, he was the chief technology officer at Verity and has held a number of technical and managerial positions at IBM Research.

April 22
"Decision Making in Real Time"
John Benediktsson ’01
CEO and Co-Founder, Financial Asset Trading & Technology of California (FATTOC)

Formed in 2007, FATTOC is an innovative technology company focused on the financial markets. Headquartered in Beverly Hills, Calif., FATTOC is involved in proprietary trading, the development of software tools for real-time market analysis, connectivity to major exchanges, and is in the process of launching a private financial trading network. Benediktsson joined FATTOC after 4 years with Madison Tyler as a partner, trader and technologist. He directly managed the technological growth of the firm's software and systems as it grew from a young startup to a mature market-making firm. He is passionate about the impact of technology on financial markets and believes that widespread real-time electronic trading results in price transparency and increased liquidity for the market's participants. Before joining Madison Tyler, John worked for a media technology firm in Santa Monica, Calif., focused on digital asset management, digital media search, digital rights management and content application integration software. Benediktsson earned his B.S. in engineering from Harvey Mudd College. 

Media Contact: Don Davidson
don_davidson@hmc.edu
(909) 607-7924 / Cell: (909) 936-8201