The executive vice-president and chief technology offi cer of Symantec Corp shoulders the challenging responsibilities of guiding investments in advanced research and development.
AS executive vice-president and chief technology officer at Nasdaq-listed Symantec Corp, Mark Bregman shoulders the challenging responsibilities of guiding investments in advanced research and the company’s development centres in India and China.
He is also responsible for the Symantec Research Labs, Symantec Security Response as well as shared and emerging technologies, architecture and standards, localisation and secure coding, and developing the technology strategy for the multinational information technology security vendor, which is ranked 353 on the Fortune 500 list.
Still, had it not been for an impulsive decision to step inside the doors of the IBM Research centre in New York City 27 years ago, Bregman might have found his life calling in the hallowed halls of academia today instead of being at the global forefront of cutting-edge information security, storage and systems management solutions.
A life changing moment
“As a young boy, I never thought about a career in IT (information technology). I always wanted to be a scientist,” recalls the 54-year-old Bregman, who holds a bachelor’s degree in physics from Harvard College and a master’s degree and doctorate in physics from Columbia University.
After completing his doctorate, Bregman harboured ambitions of doing research and becoming a professor at an American university.
At that time, he was working in a laboratory at Columbia University, New York City.
“The laboratory was very close to the IBM Research centre, and I would see it everyday while driving home. So, one day, I thought I should stop there and ask about job opportunities.”
Bregman filled in a job application form, which was obtained from the front desk receptionist, and two weeks later, he received a phone call from the director of the physical sciences department at the IBM Research centre.
“He asked me to join him for lunch the following week. I was thinking I am a graduate student. Free lunch? Are you kidding? I’ll go anywhere for a free lunch,” he quips.
It turned out that his doctorate work in experimental high energy physics had caught the attention of IBM Research.
“At that time, their experiments in measuring the mass of the neutrino was very closely related to my doctorate work.”
IBM Research offered him a salary which Bregman says was “much more than what an assistant professor would get in most universities.”
Still, he had not given up on his dream of being a university professor.
“I was planning on staying with IBM Research for only a few years, and after that, move on to a university.”
However, IBM Research turned out to be a snare that was too fascinating for Bregman to leave for the next 16 years.
“I found so many interesting things happening. You would sit down at the cafeteria and get introduced to people like Robert Dennard he invented dynamic random access memory or RAM. And after some years in research, I realised that some business issues were perhaps more challenging then scientific problems. I also became very interested in the problem of innovation how does a big company like IBM continue to innovate?”
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