Up close with leaders
___________________________________
The Next Generation — A conversation with high-tech entrepreneurs Dr. George Hatsopoulos and Marina Hatsopoulos Monday, November 13, 2006
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Dr. George Hatsopoulos
As a teenager in Nazi-occupied Greece, George Hatsopoulos started his long career of “breaking all the rules” by secretly building illegal radios that were able to receive signals other than those approved by the Nazi occupation forces. After the war, he won a scholarship at MIT to study mechanical engineering with the goal of becoming both an inventor and a businessman. Fifty years later, the company he founded as a young graduate, Thermo Electron Corporation, has grown from a small laboratory into a world leader in environmental monitoring, biomedical manufacturing and many other specialized products and technologies.
Dr. Hatsopoulos’ success began when he devised a theoretical engine that converted heat directly into electricity without using any moving parts. His thermionic converter, the first in an impressive string of technological innovations, became the catalyst for the creation of a company that is today an international leader in manufacturing. Based on an ever-increasing number of ideas and technologies coming from Thermo Electron, the company has been referred to as a “perpetual idea machine.” Then and now, Dr. Hatsopoulos saw those ideas not just as new products, but also as seeds for new businesses. Over the years he developed a strategy to make each new technology the core of its own new subsidiary, armed with the flexibility and resources to explore further innovation.
Thermo Electron went on to parent 18 of these “spin-out” companies. As opposed to “spin-offs,” Thermo Electron retained a majority stake in each new endeavor and offered its new stock to the public and not to existing shareholders. As a corporate parent, Thermo Electron then continued to provide strategic planning, employee benefits and pension fund management, executive recruiting and other internal administration services, thus freeing up the subsidiary to focus on innovation and market needs.
In 2006, Thermo Electron Corporation acquired Fisher Scientific and became Thermo Fisher Scientific, making it one of the most important life science corporations in Massachusetts, employing 30,000 and having a stock market value of $15.5 billion.
Even though Dr. Hatsopoulos retired as chairman of Thermo Electron in 2000, he remains vigourously active in pioneering new technologies and building new companies. As the Boston Globe put it in 2005, Dr. Hatsopoulos is still “thinking big at 78, as he builds another company, Pharos, into a billion-dollar success.” Working with his colleagues at Pharos, Dr. Hatsopoulos has set himself an ambitious new goal — creating an artificial heart that will have ten times the life expectancy of similar devices, at a tenth of the cost.
___________________________________
Marina Hatsopoulos
In 1994, Marina Hatsopoulos was visiting MIT’s technology licensing office looking for new technology to commercialize, when she was introduced to MIT’s 3D printing technology. Ms. Hatsopoulos went on to successfully negotiate a license for the technology, becoming the co-founder and founding CEO of Z Corporation, a $30 million privately-held technology business which manufactures the world’s fastest 3D printers.
In the same way that conventional desktop printers provide computer users with a paper output of their documents, 3D printers provide 3D CAD users a physical prototype of real world objects such as a mobile phone, an engine manifold, or a camera. Today, Z Corporation’s printers are being used by leading manufacturers, Fortune 500 companies, and centers for research — including Sony, Fisher-Price, Adidas, Canon, NASA, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, BMW, Porsche, Ford, DaimlerChrysler, Harvard, MIT and Yale — to make prototypes ranging from toys for market feedback, to fan blades for functional testing. Z Corp. systems are not only the fastest 3D printers on the market, they also offer the only color 3D printing capabilities.
In 2005, Ms. Hatsopoulos merged Z Corporation with Contex Holding, a leading manufacturer of large-format scanners and software, of which she is now a Director. Ms. Hatsopoulos also serves as a director of the GSI Group, a $300 million Nasdaq company which supplies precision motion control components, lasers and laser-based advanced manufacturing systems to the global medical, semiconductor, electronics, and industrial markets.
Ms. Hatsopoulos is currently serving her third year on the Advisory Board of the Nantucket Conference, a small, invitation-only group of New England’s most creative and forward-thinking entrepreneurs, investors, technologists, and executives. She recently served as Chair of the Committee on Finance and Investment of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, a 120,000-member professional organization focused on technical, educational and research issues of the engineering and technology community. Ms. Hatsopoulos has been honored with the Massachusetts High Tech’s All-Star Award for Hardware, and is a two-time finalist for Ernst & Young’s New England Entrepreneur of the Year Award. Ms. Hatsopoulos is also on the Board of Overseers of the Boston Children’s Museum. Ms. Hatsopoulos speaks regularly at technology conferences as well as at the nation’s top business schools including Harvard, MIT, Boston University, and Babson College.
Ms. Hatsopoulos graduated with a B.A. in Pure Mathematics and a B.A. in Music from Brown University in 1987 (Phi Beta Kappa, magna cum laude, Mathematics Prize, and Faculty Fellowship). She then worked in corporate finance at Chase Manhattan Bank in New York, before returning to earn her M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from MIT in 1993.
___________________________________
E V E N T :
The Next Generation — A conversation with two generations of leaders: Sen. Paul Sarbanes and Rep.-Elect John Sarbanes Wednesday, Nov. 29, 2006
George Washington University
Sen. Paul Sarbanes
Paul Spyros Sarbanes, Maryland’s senior Senator, was born in Salisbury, on Maryland's Eastern Shore on February 3, 1933, the son of Greek immigrants from Laconia, Greece — Spyros and Matina Sarbanes — who owned the Mayflower Restaurant on Salisbury’s Main Street.
While there were no diplomas on the wall, Sarbanes’ parents understood the importance of hard work and the value of education. After graduating from Wicomico High School in Salisbury, Paul Sarbanes received an academic and athletic scholarship to Princeton University, where he received his A.B. degree in 1954. He was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship that brought him to Oxford, England (First Class B.A., 1957). Sarbanes then returned to the United States and attended Harvard Law School. After graduating in 1960, he clerked for Federal Judge Morris A. Soper before going into private practice with two Baltimore City law firms.
Paul Sarbanes learned from his parents early in life how privileged we are to live in a democracy, the importance of community participation and, in particular, the importance of exercising the right to vote. In his many conversations with students across the State of Maryland, when he speaks of his passion for public service, Sarbanes talks about the high premium placed on involvement in public life by the ancient Greeks. In Athens, he says, “those who lived only in private life were falling short. They were called ‘idiotes,’ ” from which our word ‘idiot’ is derived today.
The principles of fairness and opportunity instilled in Sarbanes by his parents from a very early age — principles which he strongly believes are fundamental to a decent and just society — led him in time to a life of public service. In 1966, Sarbanes was first elected to the Maryland House of Delegates representing Baltimore City. During his four years as a State Legislator in Annapolis he served on the Judiciary and the Ways and Means Committees.
In 1970 he was elected to the United States House of Representatives, the first of three terms. It was during his service in the House, from 1971 to 1976, that Sarbanes was selected in August 1974 by his Democratic colleagues on the House Judiciary Committee to introduce the first Article of Impeachment, for obstruction of justice, against President Richard Nixon, in the wake of the Watergate scandal.
On November 2, 1976, Paul Sarbanes was elected to the United States Senate. He was re-elected in 1982, 1988, 1994, and yet again in the year 2000, when he made history and became the State’s longest serving United States Senator. Sen. Sarbanes serves as the Ranking Member of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, and is a senior member of the Foreign Relations, Budget and Joint Economic Committees.
In response to the failure of Enron Corporation in 2001, which, at the time, was the 7th largest corporation in the United States, Sarbanes, in his capacity as Chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, held a series of comprehensive hearings resulting in the passage of a bi-partisan bill designed to reform the accounting industry and restore the investor confidence that had been eroded following the collapse of Enron.
Immediately following the Senate Banking Committee’s approval of the legislation in June 2002, the accounting woes of WorldCom further shook the financial markets and created a tidal wave of support for the Sarbanes legislation. “The Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act” was signed into law on July 30, 2002, and has been referred to as “the most far-reaching reforms of American business practices since the time of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.” The law is now known as the “Sarbanes-Oxley Act,” named for the principal sponsors of the legislation.
The legislation creates a strong independent oversight board to oversee the auditors of public companies and enables the board to set accounting standards, and investigate and discipline accountants. It addresses conflicts of interest, ensures auditor independence, strengthens corporate governance, by requiring corporate leaders to be personally responsible for the accuracy of their company’s financial reports, and establishes safeguards to protect against investment analysts’ conflicts.
In June 1960, Sarbanes married Christine Dunbar of Brighton, England, a graduate of St. Hugh’s College, Oxford University; Lecturer in Classics at Goucher College, 1960-1973; and teacher of Latin and Classical Greek at the Gilman School in Baltimore, Maryland, 1978-2000. They are the parents of three children and the grandparents of six. Sarbanes is a member of the Greek Orthodox Cathedral of the Annunciation in Baltimore.
___________________________________
Rep.-Elect John Sarbanes
John Peter Spyros Sarbanes was born May 22, 1962 in Baltimore, Maryland. The first son of Paul and Christine Sarbanes, John was raised in Baltimore and went on to graduate in 1984 from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton (where he served as president of the Princeton University Democrats). The following year he received a Fulbright Scholarship to study law and politics in Greece.
After graduating in 1988 from Harvard Law School (where he served as co-chair of the Harvard Law School Democrats), he returned to Baltimore, where he clerked for Judge J. Frederick Motz on the federal district court and began his law practice at Venable, one of the nation’s leading law firms.
In addition to his law practice at Venable, where he specialized in fighting for access to affordable healthcare, with a particular interest in issues affecting the elderly, John accumulated nearly two decades of outside experience in the public and non-profit sectors — including a seven-year tenure as special assistant to the State Superintendent of Schools, serving as liaison to the Baltimore City Public Schools under the City-State Partnership, and fifteen years as a board member and three years as President (from 1994 to 1997), of the Public Justice Center, a Maryland-based non-profit organization dedicated to protecting and expanding the legal rights of the underrepresented, and advocating for working families in the Mid-Atlantic region on issues ranging from consumer protection to decent housing to fair treatment in the workplace.
Since childhood, John has attended the Greek Orthodox Cathedral of the Annunciation in Baltimore. In 1989, he was privileged to be invited by Father Constantine Monios to participate in a church-sponsored dialogue with members of the newly-formed Institute for Christian and Jewish Studies. Over the last fifteen years, John has served as a board member of the Institute and, for a period of five years, chaired its membership committee. Active with his wife and children in the Bolton Street Synagogue, he brings a special perspective to the Institute’s mission of promoting understanding and dialogue among people of different religious faiths. The Institute has developed a national and international reputation in the field of religious studies.
Mr. Sarbanes is also a member of the American Bar Association and Maryland State Bar Association. He currently lives in the Towson area of Baltimore with his wife of sixteen years, Dina, and their three children, who attend Baltimore County public schools.
On September 12, 2006, John Sarbanes launched a new career when he prevailed in a crowded eight-person primary race, winning with 31.9% of the vote, to gain the Democratic nomination for the seat being vacated by Rep. Benjamin Cardin in Maryland’s 3rd congressional district.
On November 7, 2006, John Sarbanes was elected to Congress from Maryland’s 3rd congressional district with 65% of the vote.
To have accomplished so much at a relatively young age only serves to underscore John Sarbanes’ belief that “our greatest natural resource is the talent and energy of the next generation.”
Here is an "absolute" box, which stays at the col bottom.
AP again. The side cols have bottom padding to avoid these boxes.