Education
University of Western Ontario.
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John Thompson
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He has held the position of Director at TDBFC since 1988 and has been chairman of the board since 2003. He is also the retired Vice Chairman of the Board of International Business Machines Corporation Corporation, a position he held from 2000-2002. Thompson is also a board member at Royal Philips Electronics North.V. (New York Stock Exchange:PHG) and The Thomson Corporation (New York Stock Exchange:TOC).
He is also Vice Chairman of the Board of Trustees for the Hospital for Sick Children and a director of the Atlantic Salmon Federation.
He is a past director of the Hertz Corporation, the Robert Mondavi Corporation, the European Finance Foundation, the Conference Board of Canada and the Canadian Business Council for National Issues. He served on three Ontario Government Councils for education reform, human resources reform and industrial policy.
Thompson began his International Business Machines Corporation career in Canada as a systems engineer in 1966. There, he held a variety of management jobs, before being elected President and Chief Executive Officer of International Business Machines Corporation Canada, Limited. in 1986.
In January 1991, Thompson moved to the United States to become Corporate Vice President of Marketing, charged with developing International Business Machines Corporation"s strategy for entering the services business, now a $60 billion operation for International Business Machines Corporation. In October 1993, he became Senior Vice President of International Business Machines Corporation"s Server Group, responsible for mainframe and midrange computers.
From January 1995 until August 2002, he was the Senior Vice President responsible for forming International Business Machines Corporation"s Software Group, after which time he was elected Vice Chairman of the International Business Machines Corporation Board. Mr. Thompson holds an undergraduate degree in engineering science from the University of Western Ontario where he joined the Kappa Alpha Society, and has completed the Executive Management programs at the Richard Ivey School, at the University of Western Ontario and the Kellogg Graduate School of Business at Northwestern University. In March 2008, he was named as the 20th Chancellor of The University of Western Ontario.
He was officially installed as Chancellor at the Fall Convocation in 2008 and will serve a four-year term through 2012.
