Few in the Kingdom are aware of the success story that is Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs’ President Dr. Jeong Kim, but he is certainly a technology leader to emulate.
Dr. Kim was born in Seoul, South Korea. At age 14, he emigrated with his family to the United States. Although he spoke very little English, he excelled in his studies. But within his family, Dr. Kim’s life was troubled. He quarreled with his father and left home at age 16. Working the night shift at a convenience store, he supported himself while he finished high school and won a scholarship to attend Johns Hopkins University.
He earned his bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in just three years and Dr. Kim also became a partner in a tech firm called Digitus. Upon graduation from university, he chose to do a stint in the US Navy. This gained Dr. Kim useful experience and perspective that would serve him well later in life, but he also had to stand by and watch Digitus founder.
After serving seven years as an officer on a nuclear submarine, while also earning a graduate degree in management, Dr. Kim decided to leave the navy and start a new company. But he was unable to obtain financing for the start-up and so instead he worked as a contract engineer for AlliedSignal Inc. at the Naval Research Laboratory. At the same time, in only two years, he earned a doctorate in engineering from the University of Maryland.
At the Naval Research Laboratory, Dr. Kim saw a need to develop equipment to link the different modes of electronic communication. In 1992, he borrowed against his house and his credit cards to start Yurie Systems, Inc., a manufacturer of asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) wide area networking equipment. His company soon became a leader in advanced data transmission and reached its initial public offering (IPO) in 1997, with no debt and no venture capital backing.
In May 1998, Dr. Kim sold Yurie Systems to Lucent Technologies for over $1 billion. At age 37, he personally earned more than half a billion dollars from the deal. Not content to go into retirement at such a young age, Dr. Kim has continued to expand his professional collaborations. After running several of Lucent’s divisions simultaneously, he moved to the University of Maryland as Professor of Practice in Reliability Engineering, with a joint appointment in the Departments of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Materials and Nuclear Engineering. He rejoined Lucent in April 2005 as the president of what is now known as the Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs organization.
Dr. Kim has been inducted into the National Academy of Engineering and also into the Academy of Achievement in Washington, D.C. The University of Maryland bestowed upon him its Innovation Hall of Fame award, and further honored him by naming the Engineering and Applied Sciences Building after him.
