John Morgridge Biography

John P. Morgridge (born 1933) is an American businessman who was the chairman of the board of Cisco Systems.

Early life and education

Morgridge is from Wauwatosa, Wisconsin and attended Wauwatosa East High School. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin in 1955; while at Wisconsin he joined Delta Upsilon Fraternity. He worked part-time at jobs such as washing equipment in a sweet pea cannery, digging stone at the quarry in Lannon, washing walls in Milwaukee's Pabst Brewery, doing road construction on Highway 64, and working as a railroad brakeman. He earned an MBA from Stanford University in 1957.

Career

After school, he worked for Stratus Computer and Honeywell Information Systems before serving as president and Chief Operating officer of GRiD Systems. He joined Cisco in 1988, then a four year old company with 34 employees, as its second chief executive officer and chairman of the board. He was replaced by John Chambers as CEO in 1995 and as Chairman in 2006. At his retirement in 2006, Cisco had 50,000 employees in 77 countries.

Philanthropy

In 2010, Morgridge and his wife donated $175 million to create the Fund for Wisconsin Scholars, an endowment which will provide grants to low-income students attending one of Wisconsin's public colleges or universities. Morgridge serves on several corporate and charity boards of directors, including the Nature Conservancy, the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, and is a trustee of Stanford University where he teaches management at the Graduate School of Business. Morgridge and his wife are among the group of American billionaires who have committed to give the majority of their wealth to the philanthropic causes and/or charities as part of The Giving Pledge.

Personal life

Morgridge is married his high school sweetheart and special education teacher, Tashia Frankwurth, granddaughter of William Frankfurth, the co-founder of the German-English Academy (now known as the University School of Milwaukee). They have an adult son and daughter, and six grandkids; a second son died of leukemia.

Morgridge was featured in the documentary film Something Ventured which premiered in 2011.