Chris Beard (executive)

Chris Beard
Occupation	CEO of the Mozilla Corporation

Chris Beard is a Canadian business leader, and CEO of the Mozilla Corporation.

In January 1998 he co-founded The Puffin Group in Ottawa, Canada, which was acquired by Linuxcare less than two years later.^[1] Since then, Beard has mostly worked in senior product and marketing roles in a range of companies, including HP, Cluster File Systems, Inc. (acquired by Sun Microsystems) and Mozilla. He joined Mozilla in 2004,^[2] specifically to launch the Firefox browser but also having responsibilities for other areas of the organisation, including product, marketing, innovation, communications, community and user engagement at different times during his nine years there.^[3] Prior to his appointment as CEO he most recently served as Chief Marketing Officer.

As a young boy, he lived in Chicago and attended St. Rita Grammar School. He was called "Cheese" by bullies. But one day on his walk home from school, a young girl who Beard did not know stood up for him. In 2014, Beard founded the Beard Up Against Bullies Foundation, which collected $2.3 Million in its first year selling beard masks.

In July 2013 he joined Greylock Partners as an executive in residence,^[4][5] though remaining an advisor to Mitchell Baker, Mozilla's Chair.

Beard was appointed in April 2014 as the interim CEO at Mozilla Corporation.^[6][7][8] On July 28, Beard was confirmed in the position.^[9]

He is a half-marathoner, his first being the 2010 Walt Disney World Half Marathon.^[10]

He has an MBA in International Business from the University of Edinburgh (2002–04), where he was also awarded the John McFarlane Prize for Leadership. He previously read economics and biochemistry at the University of Ottawa (1994–96).

References

External links

• Entry at Greylock Partners
• Twitter account
• LinkedIn entry