George H. Conrades

Establisher of IBM's Asia/Pacific headquarters in Tokyo, Japan — enabling the region to attain record growth in revenues and earnings — Conrades is an Internet technology pioneer and executive who spent 31 years at IBM, serving in senior management roles in the United States and abroad. He headed IBM United States, where he led the creation of IBM Services. For his efforts, he earned the title of IBM Senior Vice President and membership on IBM's Corporate Management Board.

In 1992, he left IBM to become Chief Executive Officer of Bolt, Beranek & Newman (BBN), a national internet services provider and internet technology research and development company whose engineers helped to create Arpanet, the forerunner of today's Internet, in the late 1960s. Capitalizing on BBN's internet-related core competencies, Conrades helped the company to become one of the world's largest Internet service providers in the 1990s. When BBN was acquired by GTE in July 1997, he was named Executive Vice President, and in July 1998 he became President of GTE Internetworking, an integrated telecommunications services firm.

In 2005 he became Executive Chairman of Massachusetts-based Akamai Technologies, Inc., a company that helps enterprises provide their customers with secure, high-performing cloud connections on any device, anywhere, and in August 2010 he became Chairman. Conrades has served as the company's Director from 1998 to present. He has also served as a Director of Harley Davidson, Inc., a motorcycle manufacturer, and Oracle Corporation, an enterprise software company, and has served as Life Trustee on the Board of Ohio Wesleyan University.

In August 1998, he joined Polaris Venture Partners, a partnership of early stage investors with a history of backing successful entrepreneurs in companies developing information and medical technology. He has continued to work with and invest in early stage companies, especially those related to the Internet and electronic commerce.

He received his B.A. degree in Physics and Math from Ohio Wesleyan University in 1961 and an M.B.A. degree from the University of Chicago, Graduate School of Business. He and his wife, Patricia "Patsy" Belt Conrades, are both Ohio Wesleyan Life Trustees, and longtime supporters of and contributors to the university, providing a lead gift for construction of OWU's state-of-the-art Schimmel/Conrades Science Center, which opened in 2004. The 150,000-square-foot center is home to Ohio Wesleyan's departments of botany/microbiology, chemistry, geology and geography, mathematics and computer science, physics and astronomy, and zoology. It also houses the university's environmental studies, pre-health studies, and urban studies programs.