Mr. Fred M. Gibbons

Currently a Consulting Professor at Stanford University Palo Alto, California Graduate School of Electrical Engineering, he holds a BS and MS degree in EE/CS from the University of Michigan and an MBA from Harvard Business School. He is the recipient of alumni of the year award from Michigan and 20th Century American Leader award from Harvard Business School. His professional career began at Hewlett Packard followed by several successful startups including CEO of Software Publishing Corporation (SPCO) in 1980 along with two other former Hewlett-Packard employees, Janelle Bedke and John Page, with an eye to producing packaged software for personal computers like the Apple II. SPC was a Mountain View, California-based manufacturer of business software, originally well-known for its "pfs:" series (and its subsequent "pfs:First" and "pfs:Professional" derivative series) of business software products, it was ultimately best known for its pioneering Harvard Graphics business and presentation graphics program. Though SPC's earliest product was for the Apple II personal computer, most of its products were for use on text-based DOS desktop computers, with non-graphical-user-interfaces (GUI), long before the graphical GUI either Macintosh or Microsoft Windows existed. A salient benefit of Harvard Graphics, then, was that it brought sophisticated on-screen graphics capabilities to computers running the normally non-graphical, text-based DOS operating system. He currently teaches Business Management to EE/CS students in EE204, and his broad areas of study include: mechanics, thermo-dynamics electrical engineering, computer programming and humanities. He is involved in new venture investing in companies including Electronic Arts and Yahoo. He is on the boards of several Silicon Valley companies and continues to participate in the incubation process of startup companies. He is also a recognized California Plein Air painter, a French expression which means "in the open air", and is particularly used to describe the act of painting outdoors. Other avocations include flying (airline transport pilot, jet type rating), scuba diving, reading and sailing.