Bio
From Rod Beckstrom - The Starfish and The Spider
ROD BECKSTRÖM
Rod Beckström is the Director of the National Cyber Security Center (NCSC) in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and reports to Secretary Michael Chertoff.
Rod co-authored The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations that presents a new model for analyzing organizations, leadership style and competitive strategy. He has co-authored three other books including one on Value at Risk (VAR), a fundamental theory of financial risk management now used to regulate banking globally.
As an entrepreneur Rod started his first company when he was 24 in a garage apartment and subsequently grew it into a global enterprise with offices in New York, London, Tokyo, Geneva, Sydney, Palo Alto, Los Angeles and Hong Kong. The company, CAT•S Software Inc., went public and was later sold. Nobel Laureates Myron Scholes and William F. Sharpe served on the company's boards of advisors and directors, respectively.
Rod also co-founded Mergent Systems. Mergent was a pioneer in inferential database engines and was sold to Commerce One for $200 million. He also co-founded TWIKI.NET, a company offering service and support for an open source wiki and collaboration software system.
From 1999 to 2001 Rod served as the Chairman of Privada, Inc. Privada was a pioneer in technology to enable private, anonymous and secure credit card transaction processing over the internet.
Rod has helped to start numerous non-profit groups and initiatives. In 2003 he co-founded a peace network of CEO's which initiated Track II diplomatic efforts between India and Pakistan. This group took symbolic actions which led to opening the borders to citizens, trade and contributed to ending the most recent Indo-Pak war. He serves on the boards of the Environmental Defense Fund and Jamii Bora Trust (micro-lending) in Africa.
Rod graduated from Stanford University with an MBA and a BA with Honors and Distinction. He served as Chairman of the Council of Presidents of the combined Stanford student body (ASSU) and was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland.
Rod's U.S. Department of Homeland Security Bio