John S. Chen

John S. Chen is a Hong Kong-American businessman serving as executive chairman and chief executive officer of BlackBerry, Inc.(BB) Ltd. Previously, he served as the chief executive officer and president of Sybase, a software vendor specializing in data management, analytics, and mobility technology. 

Chen has also served on the boards of Walt Disney Company and Wells Fargo & Company and was appointed by U.S. President George W. Bush to serve on the President's Export Council in 2005.

Career :

Chen began his career in 1979 as a design engineer with Unisys, where he eventually served as vice president and general manager of, in turn, the Convergent RISC Platform Division and the Convergent UNIX Systems Group. In 1991 he joined Pyramid Technology Corporation as executive vice president. Chen was elected president, chief operating officer and a director of Pyramid in 1993, serving until 1995.

Chen next joined Siemens Nixdorf as a vice president in 1995. He was promoted to president and chief executive officer of Siemens Nixdorf's Open Enterprise Computing Division in 1996.

Sybase :

Chen became CEO of Sybase in 1998. As John Gallant and Eric Knorr noted in IT World, Sybase had been a strong competitor of Oracle, but had become a "dead company" after failing to enter the market for enterprise applications, as Oracle had. Chen and his team proceeded to reinvent Sybase as an "enabler of the 'unwired enterprise'". In so doing, Chen and his team led a re-invention strategy that led to the turnaround of the company into a profitable mobile device software producer, valued at $6 billion in 2010.

Chen was at Sybase for 14 years. Sybase achieved strong financial performance and shareholder returns under Chen's leadership, including 55 consecutive quarters of profitability, $2.8 billion of cash generated,[citation needed] and a 28 percent compound annual growth rate of its market capitalization from a low of $362 million to $5.8 billion through 2010. Sybase was acquired in 2010 by SAP AG.

BlackBerry, board and trustee appointments :

Chen was appointed executive chairman of the board and CEO of BlackBerry Ltd in November 2013, responsible for the company's strategic direction, strategic relationships and organizational goals. He has been credited with the saving and turnaround of BlackBerry.

He served as a director on the board of the Walt Disney Company from 2004 to 2019 and of Wells Fargo & Company from 2006 to 2018, and as of September 2016 maintains stock holdings in both companies valued in the single-digit millions of dollars. [better source needed]

He has served on the boards of CIT Group and High tech startups such as Beyond.com, Niku Corporation, Wafer Technology, and Turbolinux US.

He has also served as a member of the New York Stock Exchange's listing advisory committee.