Today's Featured Biography

Sean Burke

After high school I attended Mt. San Antonio College for a year and half studying aviation. I received my Pilot’s license with the intent of pursuing a career in commercial aviation but I changed my mind and decided to go to a four year university and enter the business world. I moved to Texas, worked long enough to gain residency and attended the University of North Texas, in Denton. Although almost none of my Mt. SAC hours transferred, I worked and attended school year round taking the full course load and graduated in 2.5 years, in 1985. I received a Bachelor of Business Administration majoring in Marketing with a double minor of International Marketing and International Political Science. My first job was with NCR Corporation selling computer systems to major account banks in Houston, Texas. My first 6 months at NCR were spent in an intensive training program that mixed computing technology and salesmanship. I was at NCR for two years and left for a job with Compaq Computer in 1987 as an Assistant Product Manager. I worked on a number of new PC products in Product Marketing and Product Planning roles. I worked on various Desktop and Portable products and helped to create the ProLinea and Presario product families. In 1993 I left Compaq and went to work at Dell Computer where I created the OptiPlex, OmniPlex, and Dimension XPS, and PowerEdge product lines. In two consecutive years I appeared in articles on the front page of the Wall Street Journal.

In 1995 I was recruited back to Compaq as a Director of Product Marketing for their Presario consumer product line, which I helped to create back in 1992. In 1997 I led the effort to introduce the first fully complete multimedia PC’s priced under $1000. While it may not seem like a big deal now, it certainly was a breakthrough at the time and has led to a waterfall of computer pricing since. In 1997 I was relocated to Singapore to run the Compaq Consumer business in Asia. I lived in Singapore for two and a half years, at the same time as the Asian economic crisis. I moved back to Houston in 1999 as the Vice President of the Presario Division at Compaq. I led various products including iPAQ handhelds, projectors, networking products, and music players. HP acquired Compaq in 2002 and I stayed with the company until the end of the year.

In 2003 I obtained a position with Iomega Corporation, in what became a COO position. Most people know Iomega from its popular ZIP disks. One of my main roles was to downsize the company and restructure it. After hundreds of layoffs over two years and major corporate infrastructure improvements, I left Iomega in 2005 to take my current role with Flextronics. I am the President of the Computing Segment of Flextronics. My group designs and manufactures computers (desktop, notebook, servers) for companies like HP, Dell, IBM, etc.

Over the years I have been to about 30 countries and have enjoyed traveling and seeing new places. I have three children, daughter 12, son 11, and son 9 all who live with their mother, my ex-wife, in San Diego. I recently married a wonderful woman, my best friend, and we live in the San Jose area of northern California.

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