Business & brands / Science & invention
Scott McNealy
born 1954 · technology executive, co-founder of Sun Microsystems
Son of an American Motors executive who grew up in Bloomfield Hills, graduated from Cranbrook and co-founded Sun Microsystems.
- Born
Columbus, Indiana
age 71- Birth name
- Scott Glenn McNealy
- Detroit years
- 1950s–1972
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
McNealy was born in Indiana but grew up in Bloomfield Hills, where his father was vice chairman of American Motors, so the auto industry was part of family life. He graduated from Cranbrook School, then studied economics at Harvard and earned an MBA at Stanford. In 1982 fellow Stanford alumnus Vinod Khosla recruited him to help launch Sun Microsystems, and McNealy ran the company as CEO from 1984 to 2006, building it into a leading maker of workstations and servers and the home of the Java programming language. He later founded the free online education service Curriki and the social analytics company Wayin.
Highlights
- Graduate of Cranbrook School, Bloomfield Hills
- Co-founded Sun Microsystems in 1982
- CEO of Sun Microsystems, 1984–2006
- Founded the free education platform Curriki in 2004
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 1
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Studied here · until 1972
Cranbrook School
He graduated from this private school on the Cranbrook campus designed by Eliel Saarinen.