Jerry
Held has been a successful entrepreneur, executive and investor
in Silicon Valley for over 40 years. He
has been involved in managing all growth stages of companies from conception to
multi-billion dollar global enterprises.
He is currently CEO of Held Consulting LLC. Dr. Held is
chairman of Tamr and Madaket Health. He serves on the boards of NetApp (NTAP),
Informatica and Copia. From 2014 to 2017 he was executive chairman of MemSQL and continues as an advisor. From 2006 to 2010, he served as executive chairman of Vertica Systems (acquired by
HP) and lead independent director of Business Objects from 2002 to 2008
(acquired by SAP).
In
1998, Dr. Held was “CEO-in-residence” at the venture capital firm Kleiner
Perkins Caufield & Byers. Through
1997, he was senior vice president of Oracle Corporation’s server product
division, leading a division of 1,500 people and helping the company grow revenues
from $1.5 billion to $6 billion annually. Prior to Oracle, he spent 18 years at
Tandem Computers, where he was a member of the executive team that grew Tandem
from a startup to a $2 billion company. Throughout his tenure at Tandem, Dr.
Held was appointed to several senior management positions, including chief
technology officer, senior vice president of strategy, and vice president of
new ventures. He led the initial development of Tandem’s relational database
products.
Dr.
Held received a B.S. in electrical engineering from Purdue, an M.S. in systems
engineering from the University of Pennsylvania, and a Ph.D. in computer
science from the University of California, Berkeley, where he led the initial
development of the INGRES relational
database management system. He also
attended the Stanford Business School’s Executive Program.
Dr.
Held is also a member of the board of directors of the Tech Museum of
Innovation.