T.J. Rodgers, Founder, President and Chief Executive Officer and Director
T.J. Rodgers is founder, president, CEO, and a director of Cypress Semiconductor Corporation. He is a former chairman of the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) and sits on the board of directors of high-technology companies, including Agiga Tech (nvRAMs), Bloom Energy (fuel cells), Cypress Envirosystems (energy-saving systems), and SunPower Corp. (advanced solar cells). He is a member of the board of Dartmouth College, his alma mater.
Rodgers was a Sloan scholar at Dartmouth, where he graduated as Salutatorian with a double major in physics and chemistry. He attended Stanford University on a Hertz fellowship, earning a master's degree (1973) and a Ph.D. (1975) in electrical engineering. At Stanford, Rodgers invented, developed, and patented VMOS technology, which he sold for cash and royalties to American Microsystems Inc. (AMI). He managed the MOS memory design group at AMI from 1975 to 1980 before moving to Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), where he ran AMD's static RAM product group until 1982.
Dr. Rodgers' U.S. patents include: US7045387 - Method of performing back-end manufacturing of an integrated circuit (2006); US6903002 - Low-k dielectric layer with air gaps (2005); US6847218 - Probe card with an adapter layer for testing integrated circuits (2005); US6835616 - Method of forming a floating metal structure in an integrated circuit (2004); US6730545 - Method of performing back-end manufacturing of an integrated circuit device (2004); US6185126B1 - Self-initializing RAM-based programmable device (2001); US6131140 - Integrated cache memory with system control logic and adaptation of RAM bus to a cache pinout (2000); US5977638 - Edge metal for interconnect layers (1999); US5835401- DRAM with hidden refresh (1998); US4764248 - Rapid thermal nitridized oxide locos process (1988); US4222063 - VMOS Floating gate memory with breakdown voltage lowering region (1980); US4222062 - VMOS Floating gate memory device (1980); US3975221 - Low capacitance V groove MOS NOR gate and method of manufacture (1976); US3924265 - Low capacitance V groove MOS NOR gate and method of manufacture (1975) and US3878552 - Bipolar Integrated Circuit and Method (1975).
Rodgers was the founding CEO of Cypress in 1982 and has since built it into an international supplier of high-performance, mixed-signal, programmable solutions with nearly 6,000 employees. Called "a quintessential entrepreneurial company" by The Wall Street Journal, Cypress and its management team have received many awards for excellence in financial management. These include an Encore Award from the Stanford University Business School as entrepreneurial company of the year in 1988; an Entrepreneur of the Year award from the global consulting company, Ernst & Young, in 1991; three Bronze Awards and two Silver Awards from The Wall Street Transcript for outstanding management; and a Kachina Award from market-research company In-Stat Inc. for excellence in financial management. In 2005, Cypress was named one of the "100 Best Corporate Citizens" in the U.S. by Business Ethics magazine.
In its October 2001 issue, Upside Magazine cited Rodgers as one of the "100 People Who Changed Our World." Financial World magazine named Rodgers CEO of the Year in 1996. In 2002, Rodgers was named to a list of the year's "Top 100 Chief Executives" by Chief Executive magazine. In 2005, Rodgers was inducted into the Silicon Valley Engineering Council Hall of Fame. In 2006, he was honored with a Fellow Award from the International Engineering Consortium.
Rodgers has testified before Congress five times. A proponent of free markets, he twice advocated the elimination of corporate subsidies in testimony before the House Committee Ruling on Science, Space, and Technology, presenting to the committee in 1993 and 1991. Rodgers again condemned corporate subsidies in 1997 at hearings by a subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs. In a similar vein, in 1990, he argued against antitrust exemption for the U.S. Memories cartel in testimony before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Economic and Commercial Law. In a presentation to the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1998, Rodgers supported a proposal to raise the ceiling on the number of electronics engineers permitted to enter the U.S. on special visas, maintaining that the influx of talent increased the competitive advantage of U.S. high-technology companies. Rodgers' testimony-along with his contributions to a broad spectrum of national and international business and news publications-is available on the Cypress website at http://ceo.cypress.com.
Rodgers has been cited for his achievements in supporting the philosophy of capitalism and freedom, and for his contributions to philanthropic and other nonbusiness groups. In 2001, Rodgers received the Silicon Valley Capitalism Award for "exemplifying the virtues of capitalism and defending capitalism with ethical principles in the media." Also that year, Rodgers was presented with an Angel Award by the International Angel Investors organization for his venture-capital activities supporting the semiconductor industry, and the inaugural Entrepreneur of the Year Award from the Smith Center for Private Enterprise Studies at California State University at Hayward. He joined a short list of scholars, including Milton Friedman, in receiving an Honorary Degree in Social Sciences from the University of Guatemala for his numerous essays on the topics of capitalism and freedom. He received an Outstanding Individual Entrepreneurship Award from the U.S. Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship in 1997, and the City of Santa Clara, California named him Entrepreneur of the Year in 1986.
Rodgers has been a passionate defender of shareholder rights, addressing the subject repeatedly in his speeches and writings. In 1996, Rodgers took a Catholic nun to task for suggesting that the Cypress Board of Directors lacked ethnic and gender diversity. In a far-ranging letter to the nun, which later became the focus of a page one story in The Wall Street Journal, Rodgers argued that attempts to make corporations more socially responsible prevent them from maximizing profits-and therefore from rewarding shareholders. He returned to the theme in a 1997 opinion piece for The New York Times, criticizing Colin Powell and the Clinton administration for a proposal to mandate corporate contributions to philanthropic causes. In the article, "Holding Up the Shareholder," Rodgers argued that subordinating shareholder value to social responsibility cheats both shareholders and society at large.
Outside business, Rodgers was the first Silicon Valley CEO to lead Santa Clara County's Second Harvest Food Bank Corporate Challenge event. In 2005, Rodgers chaired the event for a second time, garnering the Food Drive Chair Recognition Award. Cypress won its 17th consecutive victory in 2008 for the most pounds of food donated per employee.
In 2007, Rodgers received the Star Award for Extraordinary Support of the Greene Scholars Program. The program is an initiative of the California Alliance of African American Educators and focuses on advancing educational opportunities for African American students pursuing careers related to math, science or technology. The alliance also recognized Rodgers as a Special Corporate Honoree for 2007.
Rodgers received awards from the Healing Institute for his support of the [George Washington] Carver Scholars Program in 2000, 2001 and 2002. Between 1998-2001, he was honored with annual appreciation awards from the Westside Kickers Track Club, a team of inner-city athletes from Oakland, Calif., whose training and travel to regional and national competitions was underwritten by Cypress. The Kickers club won the USA Junior Olympic Championship in 2000.
In 1999, Rodgers' support of a team of underprivileged students from San Jose-based Broadway High School helped the group to capture the Silicon Valley Regional Championship in a national competition to build robots. The competition was sponsored by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and NASA's Ames Research facility. The Broadway team went on to win the Silicon Valley Regional Champion Award in 2000 and 2001, capturing the Lonestar Regional Champions Award in 2000; a Southern California Regional Champions Award in 2001; and second place in the National Championship in 2001.
In 2000, Rodgers set up computer facilities with Internet access for economically disadvantaged Northern California student groups, donating equipment and money to the East Palo Alto Computer Lab and the Girls Club of the Mid-Peninsula.
In 2004, Cypress inaugurated the Cypress Semiconductor Spinal Cord Rehabilitation Gymnasium at the Santa Clara Valley Medical Center in California. A year later, the company donated funds to help the medical center establish a mobile prenatal clinic.
Rodgers' public presentations include a 2002 speech criticizing accounting practices mandated by the Federal Accounting Standards Board; it was delivered to the Stanford Directors' College and published by the libertarian Cato Institute under the title "Corporate Accounting: Congress and FASB Ignore Business Realities" (see www.Cato.org). His November 1998 speech, "Why Silicon Valley Should Not Normalize Relations with Washington DC," was the keynote address at an event cosponsored by Cato and the Economist magazine.
Rodgers' speech, "Let Our Options Go!" was delivered in 1994 to a grassroots rally in Silicon Valley supporting broad-based employee-equity programs. At that time, it helped to kill FASB's attempt to force companies to expense stock options on their income statement. His 1990 speech, "The American Semiconductor Industry: Winner or Whiners?" was delivered to a meeting of the American Electronics Association in Seattle, Washington, and took his own industry to task for competitive losses to Japan during the late 1980s. Speaking to the June 1989 graduating class at Dartmouth College, Rodgers' "An Entrepreneur's View of American Competitiveness" extolled the virtues of entrepreneurial initiative.
Rodgers' personal interests include movies; cooking, especially Italian, French, and Chinese cuisine; collecting wines, notably French burgundies; and tending his three Pinot Noir vineyards, with which he intends to produce wines surpassing those in his collection. He is a member of the Board of Visitors and Fellows at the Department of Viticulture and Enology, University of California, Davis. In addition, Rodgers is an avid jogger, logging four to six miles daily.
