The modern IT industry is relatively young, compared with, say the automotive industry, and it is common to see youthful executives at the helm when they first started out to be the CEO or Presidents of these companies. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs come to mind, along with Larry Ellis. But that was then. We now have a new crop of youthful leaders taking CEO positions. One of them is Charles Phillips, former co-present with Safra Catz at Oracle who, in September 2010 assumed the CEO position to the world’s 3rd largest ERP solutions company, the $2 billion Georgia-based Infor Global Solutions.
Infor is also a relatively new player in the IT software industry, founded only in 2002 when it started acquiring many smaller IT suppliers over the last decade. Thanks to Jim Schaper’s stewardship, the company has grown to employee more than 8,000 people to serve over 70,000 customers in at least 35 countries. This is what Jim leaves for the young Charles Phillips to steer as it enters what the Infor board calls its 2nd growth phase.
With just 20 years of work experience, Charles Phillips has certainly gone straight up. And it didn’t take that mane company to work for. Armed with a BS Computer Science degree from the US Air Force Academy, a Juris Doctor from the New York Law School and an MBA from the Hampton University, Charles briefly served as a Captain in the US Marines before getting into Wall Street. He started out as Managing Director for the IT Sector of Morgan Stanley before becoming co-present at Oracle in 2003. And in 2010, he became CEO of Infor. Not bad of a young executive.