William Coleman

Mr. Coleman was most recently Chairman and CEO of BEA Systems. Together with Ed Scott and Alfred Chuang, Mr. Coleman founded BEA in early 1995. Mr. Coleman brought to BEA more than 30 years of high-technology experience with particular emphasis on software development. Prior to BEA, he held various management positions at Sun Microsystems, Inc., including: Founder, Vice President, and General Manager of Sun Professional Services; Vice President of System Software; and Co-founder of Sun Federal, Inc. Before his work at Sun, Mr. Coleman co-founded and was Vice President of Engineering at Dest Systems. Prior to that, he held positions as Director of Product Development at VisiCorp and manager of the high frequency systems group at GTE Sylvania. Mr. Coleman began his career in the US Air Force as Chief of Satellite Operations in the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force. In 2001, Ernst & Young named Mr. Coleman the Entrepreneur Of The Year in the Technology / Communications category. The Robert H. and Beverly A. Deming Center for Entrepreneurship at Colorado University-Boulder also named him its 2001 Entrepreneur of the Year. The media have also awarded Mr. Coleman several honors: BusinessWeek named him one of 2001's e.biz 25 top executives, CRN named him one of the year's Top 25 executives, and Network World named him one of the "most powerful vendor executives." He is president of the Colorado University Coleman Institute for Cognitive Disabilities Foundation and is on the board of directors of the Silicon Valley Manufacturing Group. He is also a member of the Trilateral Commission. Mr. Coleman has a bachelor's degree in Computer Science from the US Air Force Academy, and a master's degree in Computer Science and Computer Engineering from Stanford University.