Bio
Vernon Jordan - Vernon Eulion Jordan, Jr. (born August 15, 1935) is a lawyer and business executive in the United States. He served as a close adviser to President Bill Clinton and has become known as an influential figure in American politics.
Eric Schmidt - Eric Emerson Schmidt, Ph.D is chairman and CEO of Google, Inc. and a member of the board of directors of Apple, Inc. He also sits on the Princeton University board of trustees.
Since coming to Google, Eric has focused on building the corporate infrastructure needed to maintain Google's rapid growth as a company and ensuring that quality remains high while product development cycle times are kept to a minimum. Eric shares responsibility for Google's day-to-day operations.
Eric's Novell experience culminated a twenty-year record of achievement as an Internet strategist, entrepreneur, and developer of great technologies.
Prior to his appointment at Novell, Eric was chief technology officer and corporate executive officer at Sun Microsystems, Inc., where he led the development of Java, Sun's platform-independent programming technology, and defined Sun's internet software strategy.
Before joining Sun in 1983, he was a member of the research staff at the Computer Science Lab at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) and held positions at Bell Laboratories and Zilog.
Eric has a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Princeton University and a master's and Ph.D. in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley. In 2006, Eric was elected to the National Academy of Engineering, which recognized his work on "the development of strategies for the world's most successful Internet search engine company."
Eric was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences as a fellow in 2007. He is also chairman of the board of directors for the New America Foundation.