Edward Zander
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Edward J. Zander (born January 12, 1947, in Brooklyn, New York) is an American business executive. In January, 2004, he joined Motorola as Chief Executive Officer having previously been a managing director at Silver Lake Partners, a technology investment fund. From 1987 to June 2002 he was the Chief Operating Officer and in January 1998 was also awarded the title of President of Sun Microsystems. He is a director at Seagate Technologies. He also serves on the board of directors for Jason Foundation for Education, on the science advisory board of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (where he received a degree in electrical engineering) and on the advisory board of the Boston University School of Management (where he received a Master of Business Administration degree.)
Personal
Zander is the son of Jewish immigrants from Poland (father) and Greece (mother), [link], who couldn't afford college and stressed education to their children. His father reportedly dreamed of being a lawyer but instead settled for a job as a furrier in order to support his ill parents. Zander learned to work hard from his father--who left the house at 5 a.m. six days a week to toil in Manhattan as a furrier. And he learned stoicism from his mother, now blind with glaucoma, who emigrated from Greece after her entire family was wiped out by Turkish force in 1922.[link] He was given the nickname "Fast Eddie" by his friends largely because of his Brooklyn roots. According to a Boston Globe article, he frequently demonstrated the "hustle of a street kid spoiling for a good fight"; Zander himself remarked, "I'm from New York, so I'm New York fast" (June 19, 2000). Zander is married to Mona Zander, the couple have two sons.[link]
Career at Sun Microsystems
Edward Zander's career at Sun Microsystems began in 1987. Throughout the 1990s, he rose through the ranks, first taking the role of vice president of corporate marketing, and then becoming president of Sun's software division. In January 1998 he was promoted to COO (meanwhile Masood Jabbar took the role of President) and then to COO and President of Sun in April of 1999. Zander was responsible for Sun's seven product divisions which included engineering, product development, sales, service and marketing. The CTO and corporate brand marketing also reported to him.After he left the company in 2002, CEO Scott McNealy regained the title of President of Sun Microsystems. The position of COO and President was filled by Jonathan Schwartz on April 2 2004.
Career at Motorola
On January 5 2004, Zander was selected by the Motorola board of directors to succeed Chris Galvin who retired in September of 2003, ending a three generation reign of his family at the head of the electronics giant.The primary candidates considered to replace him were Zander and Mike Zafirovski, though famous executives such as AT&T's President Betsy Bernard, Qwest Communications International's Richard Notebaert and Verizon Communications' Lawrence Babbio were also considered. Earlier, Zafirovski had proved himself an excellent executive at Motorola. He arrived from General Electric and led the cell phone business to profitability. Unfortunately for him, the board was looking for a more radical change in leadership. Even though Zafirovski was virtually an outsider himself (having served at the corporation for only three years), the board of directors went with someone with more experience in a complex organization like Motorola. Zander’s impressive career at Sun and his radical "mover and shaker" attitude won the board over and he was given the position. Zafirovski was disappointed and was expected to leave the company, especially with his history of reported run-ins with the board of directors but stayed until 31st January 2005, when he resigned.
Zander had a lot to prove, and he quickly went to work. His first task was to oversee the new spin-off that Motorola had begun just shortly before he joined, Freescale Semiconductor. He announced that he would focus the company on its consumer electronics business and start taking better care of its customers (he even assigned the Chief Information Officer, Samir Desai, to one of their largest and angriest customers, Nextel).
Zander came into a tough corporate culture - Motorola's departments have been referred to as "warring tribes". He created a bonus structure that based 25% of all bonuses on customer satisfaction, meeting product deadlines, cooperation between departments, etc. He started looking to target major corporations for communications gear and services, instead of just aiming at customers of the phones and telecom companies with wireless gear. A reorganization of Motorola's business divisions became likely. Zander wanted to see new types of products that focused on melding Internet technologies with wireless phone technologies.
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