John S. Chen

John S. Chen 程守宗
Chen at Techonomy 2010
Born	(1955-07-01) July 1, 1955 (age 61) British Hong Kong
Citizenship	British (by birth) American
Alma mater	Brown University California Institute of Technology
Occupation	Executive Chairman and CEO, BlackBerry Limited

John S. Chen (Chinese: 程守宗; pinyin: Chéng Shǒuzōng; Jyutping: cing⁴ sau² zung¹; born July 1, 1955) is a Hong Kong-born British-American businessman serving as executive chairman and chief executive officer of BlackBerry Ltd. Previously, he served as the chief executive officer and president of Sybase, an independent software vendor specializing in data management, analytics, and mobility technology. He is currently a director of Wells Fargo & Company and Walt Disney Company.

A native of Hong Kong, Chen studied at La Salle College in Hong Kong until Form 5, before coming to the United States and graduating from Northfield Mount Hermon School, a preparatory school in Northfield, Massachusetts. He went on to graduate from Brown University in 1978 with a B.S., magna cum laude in electrical engineering, and in 1979, with an M.S. in electrical engineering from CalTech.

Chen began his career in 1979 as a design engineer with Unisys, where he eventually served as vice president and general manager of, in turn, the Convergent RISC Platform Division and the Convergent UNIX Systems Group. In 1991 he joined Pyramid Technology Corporation as executive vice president. Chen was elected president, chief operating officer and a director of Pyramid in 1993, serving until 1995.