Zod Nazem

Farzad Nazem
Farzad Nazem photographed by Christopher Michel in 2014
Born	1961 Tehran  Iran
Spouse(s)	Noosheen Hashemi

Farzad Nazem (Persian: فرزاد ناظم‎‎) (born 1961), also known as Zod Nazem, was Yahoo!'s chief technology officer and one of its longest-serving executives. On May 30, 2007, at age 46, he announced that he would retire and leave Yahoo! in June of that year. Since retirement, Nazem has spent most of his time on investments, philanthropy, and professional mentoring of young entrepreneurs in the technology field.

Nazem began working at the young age of 13 and paid his way through college. At the age of 19, he graduated with a B.S. degree in Computer Science with highest honors from the California Polytechnic State University. Upon graduation, he was recruited by Rolm Corporation, a revolutionary technology company of the time.

Nazem started his technical career in the VLCBX Division at Rolm Corporation, producing large, computer-based telephone switches. He was soon recruited to join Sydis Inc., a spin-off of Rolm, as a senior engineer. Sydis was positioning itself to become the leading provider of hybrid telephony and computer platform of the early 1980s.

In 1985, Nazem joined Oracle Corporation, what was then a small pre-IPO company. He spent a little over 10 years at Oracle working closely with its CEO, Larry Ellison, on strategic projects like the creation of the “Information Super Highway.” This effort of the early 1990s was meant to bring information and entertainment to consumers’ homes by providing the software platforms for Video Serving and other services to Telcos. By the time Nazem left Oracle, the company had grown from 350 to around 35,000 employees.

When Nazem was recruited by Yahoo! in 1996, the company was less than a year old and had yet to go public. At the time, Lycos, Infoseek and Excite were considered established and more popular internet search engines while Yahoo! was better described as an internet directory. Nazem was brought to Yahoo! to build the engineering organization, take over site operation, and complete the executive team in preparation for the company’s public debut.