Tom Mendoza Presents

Tom Mendoza Presents is a lecture series hosted by Tom Mendoza, former president and vice chairman, NetApp, current board director of Varonis and Vast Data.

Join Tom as he interviews top business executives about their journey to success, what they learned along the way in forging great companies and their advice to students and professionals as they build their careers.

See below for lecture dates and times. Lectures are held in the Jordan Auditorium and are free and open to the public and Notre Dame community. The series is sponsored by the Burns Family endowment.

About Tom Mendoza

Tom Mendoza is the former Vice Chairman at NetApp. He joined in 1994 and was responsible for sales until becoming president in 2000. In 2009, he became vice chairman. In that same year NetApp was voted the #1 company in America to work for (and was in the top 10 places to work for more than a decade).

Tom has given talks on the power of corporate culture and leadership all over the world to people in such diverse organizations as the U.S. Marine Corps, West Point, CIO forums, Oracle’s Leaders Circle, and Stanford University. In 2009 he was the corecipient with NetApp Chairman Dan Warmenhoven of the Morgan Stanley Leadership Award for Global Commerce.

Tom holds a BA degree from the University of Notre Dame and is an alumnus of Stanford University’s Executive Business Program. In September 2000 Notre Dame renamed its business school the Mendoza College of Business after an endowment made by Tom.

Fall 2023

September 1, 12 - 1 p.m.: Leadership, Culture and the Power of Diversity

Hosted by Tom Mendoza this discussion will feature Tennessee State University head coach Eddie George, Niele Ivey the Karen & Kevin Keyes Family Head Women’s Basketball Coach and former Notre Dame All-American, Captain, and Patrick Industries Board Director, Derrick Mayes. The talk is part of the University’s celebration of the historic matchup between the Fighting Irish and TSU Tigers — the first time in the Notre Dame football program’s history to face off against a Historically Black College and University (HBCU) school.

Eddie George is the Tennessee State University Football Head Coach. The Heisman Trophy Winner and former NFL player was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2011 and the International Sports Hall of Fame in 2020.

Niele Ivey ‘00 is the Karen & Kevin Keyes Family Head Women’s Basketball Coach, former All-America point guard at Notre Dame and a five-year WNBA veteran. Ivey was named the 2023 ACC Coach of the Year and was a finalist for the Naismith National Coach of the Year Award.

Derrick Mayes ’96 is a Managing Partner at Bonaventure Equity and former captain and All-American Notre Dame Football Player. Mayes is currently a member of the board of directors of Patrick Industries and previously served as a managing partner for Play Like A Champion Capital and as vice president of Learfield IMG College.

Watch Video

Fall 2022

September 16, 2 - 3 p.m.: A Conversation with David Reilly, former Chief Technology Officer of Bank of America

David has over 25 years’ experience as CIO and CTO at some of the largest financial institutions in the world – the last 10 years of which were with Bank of America. As CTO at Bank of America David led the technology transformation that removed $2 billion of annual operating expense through the migration to Cloud and to a simplified and secure infrastructure. This included overseeing the Global Information Security function and the implementation of an enterprise wide, industry leading, cyber program. As the CIO for Global Banking and Markets at Bank of America, he led the team delivering industry leading digital capabilities to the Global Banking and Markets businesses and drove record digital adoption across all businesses during a time of unprecedented volume and business and regulatory change.

Prior to Bank of America, David held senior positions at Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and Credit Suisse.

David currently serves on the boards of Ally Financial (NYSE: ALLY) and Data Dynamics, as well as advising a number of technology companies in the cyber, data and analytics, enterprise software and AI / ML spaces.

David is also the Board Chair of NPower – a not for profit organization helping young adults from underserved communities and military veterans get a start in the technology industry through the delivery of technical training and job placement into full-time positions.

Watch Video

November 4, 2 - 3 p.m.: A Conversation with Dan Warmenhoven, former Chairman and CEO of NetApp

Dan Warmenhoven is the former chairman and CEO of NetApp. Dan served as chief executive officer from 1994 to 2009 and executive chairman of NetApp from 2009 to 2014. Under Dan‘s leadership, NetApp grew to become a multibillion-dollar company and a recognized market leader in networked storage, a concept the company pioneered. Dan led the company’s initial public offering in November 1995.

NetApp is consistently listed in the top 20 of FORTUNE magazine’s 100 Best Companies to Work for in America and was ranked #1 in 2009. NetApp is also included in FORTUNE magazine’s “World’s Most Admired Companies” and “America’s Largest Corporations” lists as well as in Forbes magazine’s “400 Best Big Companies in America” list. NetApp is included in both the S&P 500 and the NASDAQ 100 indexes.

In August 2009, Dan received the Morgan Stanley Leadership Award for Global Commerce. In June 2007, Dan received an honorary degree from Santa Clara University for his dedication to global business and technology leadership and in 2006 was named one of the “50 Most Powerful People in Networking” by Network World. In 2004, he won the prestigious “National Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year” award, and in 2001 BusinessWeek named Dan one of its “Top 25 Managers” for the year.

Dan is a director of Bechtel Group, Inc., Alteryx, Inc., Cohesity, Inc., Weka.IO, and TruU, Inc. He has also served on the boards of companies such as Palo Alto Networks, Redback Networks, Theranos and Aruba Networks. Dan is a trustee of Cristo Rey San José Jesuit High School and has served on the Board of Trustees for Bellarmine College Preparatory, McQuaid Jesuit High School and the Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, California.

Previously, Dan served as chairman, president, and CEO of Network Equipment Technologies (N.E.T.), a telecommunications manufacturer. He is a veteran of Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP), where he held senior management positions, including general manager of the Information Networks group. Prior to working at HP, Dan was employed for 13 years at IBM Corporation.

Dan holds a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering, with honors, from Princeton University.

Watch Video

Fall 2021

September 17th 11am - 12pm: A Conversation with Jeff Smith, COO, World Fuel Service

Jeff Smith is World Fuel Service’s, Chief Operating Officer. Jeff’s focus as COO is delivering innovation at the pace of the best tech companies by operationalizing culture – making it something you can learn, practice, and improve.

Jeff believes that talent and culture are the differentiating factors of great companies. His organization strategy centers around building, nurturing and coaching small, self-directed teams that are loosely coupled and tightly aligned to Agile practices. His leadership beliefs focus on providing clarity of purpose for his teams and inspiring diversity of thought and collective wisdom to solve problems in unconventional ways. Jeff is driving an Agile culture of innovation at WFS.

Prior to joining WFS, Jeff was Chief Information Officer at IBM. He was globally responsible for 20k IBMers across the company’s IT solutions and infrastructure. In addition, he also led the Agile transformation across the company. Before leading IBM’s IT organization, Jeff was CEO of Suncorp Business Services. He was responsible for Suncorp Group’s shared services across all companies. Jeff has over 30 years of corporate experience and has held senior executive roles in several companies including Telstra, Honeywell, and Toyota.

In addition, Jeff currently sits on the Board of Directors of Sonrai Security as well as the Board of Advisors for both Zoom and Box.

A native of Ohio, Jeff earned a bachelor’s degree in Applied Science from Miami University and an MBA from San Jose State University. In addition, he also served on the Australian Fulbright Commission awarding Australian post-graduate scholarships to US universities.

Watch Video