Paul Sagan

Paul Sagan (born 1959) is an American businessman and an executive in residence (XIR) at General Catalyst Partners. He formerly served as the Executive Vice Chairman of Akamai Technologies. Sagan joined Akamai in October 1998 as Chief Operating Officer, became President the following year and was elected to the Akamai board of directors in January 2005. He became CEO in April 2005 and was succeeded by Akamai co-founder Tom Leighton on January 1, 2013. He is a member of the board of directors of Akamai, Datto, Inc., EMC Corporation, L2, Inc., VMWare, Inc., and the not-for-profit ProPublica. He is also a trustee of his alma mater, Northwestern University. Previously, he was a member of the board of directors of Dow Jones & Company, Digitas, Maven Networks, OpenMarket, FutureTense, Inc., and VDONet Corp. before each company was sold. He also served for a period of time on the boards of Experience, Inc. iRobot Corp. and Medialink Worldwide, Inc.

Career

Upon graduating from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, Sagan began his career at WCBS-TV as a news writer and was named news director in 1987. In 1991, he joined Time Warner to design and launch NY1. In 1995 he was named president and editor of new media at Time Inc., a position he held until 1997. From 1997 to 1998 Sagan served as senior adviser to the World Economic Forum.

Personal

Sagan is married to Ann Burks Sagan and they have three children, Katharine, Michael, and Emma.

Honors

Sagan was appointed by President Barack Obama to the President's National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee in 2010. Governor Charlie Baker appointed Sagan to be Chairman of the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education in 2015. He is a three time Emmy award winner for broadcast journalism in New York. He became a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2008. In 2009 Sagan was named the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award in the technology category. In 2008 he was named as a member of the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy.