Mathematics is Focus of Two Grants CAMPUS CURRENT
Built from Scratch ANNENBERG SERIES SPEAKER COLIN BODELL P14
Behind the phenomenal success of
Amazon.com is a simple credo: fi nd an itch and scratch it—fi rst yours, then every- body else’s. Colin Bodell
Itches can lead to innovation, said Colin Bodell P14.
P14, Amazon’s vice president of website applica-
tion platform and builder tools, shared this insight during the spring Annenberg Leadership and Management Speaker Series, a forum for candid talk by prominent senior executives. “The notion of scratching your own itch, of being your own
customer, and then going out and solving problems for the rest of the world is…very interesting and also very important be- cause it’s led to some tremendous innovations,” said Bodell, who joined Amazon in 2006 after a turn as chief technology offi cer for VA Software. Speaking as the leader of Amazon’s online platform develop-
ment and operations teams and as technical representative for the company’s Open Source Group, Bodell indicated that one of his employer’s current big itches revolves around efforts to elimi- nate barriers to innovation and business change—barriers that exist both within Amazon and among its many partners world- wide. “Amazon is very much a large umbrella company with lots of very individual entrepreneurial businesses that lie within it,” he said, noting that the shopping cart, payment functions, user review sections and forums work independently of one another, yet must be able to fl uidly interact.
What’s Your Itch? One itch Amazon can’t seem to scratch enough is its desire to promote entrepreneurism, said Bodell, himself a holder of 10 patents pending in the areas of website operations, email sub- scription management and DDoS protection. He said, for example, that Amazon rents its cloud computing
capabilities to software developers who have big ideas. This ar- rangement gives them affordable access to the tools and supports infrastructure they need to go from concept to reality, all the while avoiding the fi nancial risks associated with venture capital.
Trustee Update
Four members were welcomed July 1 to the Harvey Mudd College Board of Trustees.
A Time Magazine “Global Infl uential,” Eric B. Kim ’76 recently retired from his position as CEO and president of Soraa Inc. Kim, a physics alumnus, was previously executive vice president at Samsung Electronics Co. A native of Seoul, South Korea, he earned a master’s in engineering from UCLA and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
Private real-estate investor Cherif Sedky P14 is a gradu- ate of Stanford University (economics) and Georgetown University Law Center. He was senior advisor and chief legal offi cer for Al-Murjan Private Offi ce in Saudi Arabia and was a principal of real estate advisory fi rm Greystone Capital Alliance LLC.
Jocelyn Goldfein is director of engineering at Facebook, where she oversees teams responsible for many popular Facebook features. Prior to Facebook, Goldfein, a Stanford University computer science graduate, was vice president and general manager at VMware and director of engineering at MessageOne.
Shamit Grover ’05, an investor at MSD Capital in New York, joins the board as a Young Alumnus Trustee.
Other board transitions Returning members: Bruce Worster ’64, Norman Sprague Advisory trustees: Neil Chriss, Peter Muller, John Vickery ’90/91 Emeritus Trustees: Richmond (Dick) Hoch ’63, Clifford Miller
College News
Bodell asked, “What’s your itch, what’s your passion? What’s
the problem that you have to deal with on a regular basis? ...If you can solve it for yourself, and you do so in a great way and you’re very pleased and very thrilled with it, there’s a very high likelihood that other people will also get the chance to benefi t from it as well.”
For Annenberg Series speakers information, including links to talks by Bodell and Whitney Johnson, visit
http://bit.ly/157vUvh.
SUMMER 2013 Har vey Mudd College 7
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