Robert Kennedy

About Robert Kennedy

My first contact with computers was recycling IBM punch cards in Boy Scouts! From there, my high school math teacher brought in a computer simulator into class and clearly did not know what to do with it. Drawn to it immediately, I spent every afternoon after school figuring out how to make it work. after a couple of weeks, my math teacher told me that I was going to teach it to the rest of the class. That started my journey. Computer Science was the only choice for me for college. After I got my degree, I was hired to write COBOL at McDonnell Douglas, now Boeing. I quickly graduated to Assembler programming and managing IBM mainframe operating systems. Eventually, I managed a group of 17 systems programmers at Levi Strauss & Company. My career continued to progress and then I had, as my friends called it,\"Bob\'s Big Adventure\" I got lost in the woods near Lake Tahoe in the middle of winter while cross country skiing. After a night in the woods, I was rescued the next day by the local search & rescue team. While contemplating my fate in the middle of the night, I realized that IT was my passion, not blue jeans. Soon after that, I joined a small IBM mainframe software startup that eventually became Serena Software, now Microfocus. I helped grow Serena Software into a multi-million dollar business focused on software change management. After a couple of stops, I joined IBM as their Mainframe Application Development Product Manager in the Rational brand, helping to significantly grow that business. From there, I moved into application development security to help train sellers on AppScan. When IBM formed their security business unit in 2012, i joined that team to focus on a broader range of security solutions. I helped sellers succeed and meet their revenue targets with application security, data security, security for the cloud, IBM z security & more.I am now helping to drive the mainframe software business at Broadcom, working closely with our global system integrators (GSIs) to help them deploy enterprise solutions for their customers.

Experience

1. Senior Technical Alliances Manager

   Entrust

   Feb 2021 — Present

   I am responsible for defining and executing technology and business partnership strategies for Entrust\'s HSM & KMS encryption solutions, identifying market opportunities of strategic value for partnerships and the key partners in those markets, and driving integration with Entrust\'s HSM & KMS products and services as part of a joint solution.

Education

• Washington University in St. Louis

  Bachelors, AMCS

  1973 — 1977