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The life and career of Mark Hurd, the CEO of Oracle who passed away at the age of 62
He attended Archbishop Curley-Notre Dame High School, in Miami, Florida. He graduated in 1975.
Source: Archdiocese of Miami
He attended Baylor University in Waco, Texas, on a tennis scholarship (where he later had a tennis center named after him). He graduated with a degree in business administration in 1979.
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
After graduation, Hurd became a junior salesman at NCR Corporation in San Antonio, Texas. The company specialized in point-of-sale systems and ATM machines.
Source: Fortune
Hurd worked for NCR for 25 years in a variety of roles, including management, operations, sales, and marketing.
Source: Fortune
By 2001, he was named president of NCR. In 2002, he was named chief operating officer of the organization.
Source: Fortune
But perhaps his biggest role was overseeing the company’s Teradata data-warehousing division, which NCR acquired in 1999. The tech-centric role would be key for Hurd’s move into enterprise computing after his tenure at NCR.
Source: Fortune
After leaving NCR, Hurd joined computing giant Hewlett-Packard as CEO following Carly Fiorina’s ouster in 2005.
Source: CNN
Hurd was one of HP’s first CEOs to also hold the title of president, but he was not appointed as chairman of the board of directors until 2006.
Source: CNN
Hurd is widely credited with growing HP into the computing powerhouse it became through sales of personal computers, laptops, and home printers. Over five years, including the 2008 recession, Hurd had overseen consistent revenue gains which some attributed to his aggressive cost-cutting strategies.
Source: Bloomberg
During his tenure, Hurd was named one of Fortune’s Most Powerful People in Business, San Francisco Chronicle’s CEO of the Year, and one of Forbes' "top gun" CEOs.
Sources: Fortune, San Francisco Chronicle, Forbes
Hurd eventually resigned from HP in August 2010 after a contractor accused him of sexual harassment. Although an investigation did not find Hurd to be in violation of HP’s code of conduct, it did find irregularities in his expense reports.
Source: Wall Street Journal
One month later, Hurd joined Oracle as president with Safra Catz, with the two taking over for Charles Phillips. Hurd also joined Oracle’s board of directors.
Source: CNET
Hurd and Catz were appointed joint CEOs in 2014 by then-CEO Larry Ellison, who had announced he was stepping down and taking the role of Chief Technology Officer.
Source: USA Today
Under Hurd and Catz, Oracle completely revamped its sales structure and began the process of moving the business to focus on cloud computing — an area where it's historically been outstripped by rivals including Amazon and Microsoft.
Source: Fortune
Hurd announced that he was taking a medical leave of absence in September 2019, making Catz the sole CEO at Oracle.
Source: CNN
On Friday, October 18th, the company announced that Hurd had passed away at the age of 62. He's survived by his wife, Paula, and two daughters.
Source: Business Insider
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