Reed Hastings
|
|
Reed Hastings (Wilmot Reed Hastings, Jr.) is founder of Netflix. He is currently Netflix Chief executive officer, President and chairman of the board, and was the founder of Pure Software.
His father was a lawyer who once served in the Nixon administration, serving as general counsel in the United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. The younger Hastings grew up in the Washington D.C. and Boston, Massachusetts areas, and attended high school at the Buckingham, Browne, and Nichols School in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
He studied mathematics at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, and won its mathematics department's Smyth prize in 1981. He received his bachelor's degree from Bowdoin College in 1983, then served as a Peace Corps Volunteer teaching mathematics in Swaziland from 1983 to 1986. He earned a master's degree in computer science from Stanford University in 1988.
In 1990 he founded his first company, Pure Software, which became one of the fifty largest public software companies before it was acquired by Rational Software in 1997. Rational was subsequently acquired by IBM.
A self-avowed Democrat, Hastings is active in educational philanthropy and politics. He is a founding member of NewSchools.org, Aspire Public Schools, Pacific Collegiate School, and EdVoice.net. He led the successful drive in 1998 for a stronger charter school law. He is a member of Technology Network (TechNet), where he served as CEO for a year. In 2000, he joined with the California Teachers' Association, Governor Davis, John Doerr, and others to win the battle for easier passage of local school construction bonds.
He served as President of the California State Board of Education for two terms under Gray Davis. Although Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger nominated Hastings to serve for another term, the California state legislature rejected him in January of 2005 [1] (http://www.cde.ca.gov/nr/ne/yr05/yr05rel8.asp).
External Link:
- Reed Hastings biography at Netflix.com (http://ir.netflix.com/bios.cfm?bio=Hastings)
- Reed Hastings article on the Peace Corps site (http://peacecorpsonline.org/messages/messages/467/2019928.html)
- Reed Hastings article on charter schools (http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2000/april5/hastings-45.html)
- Reed Hastings interview on (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4112093) National Public Radio