Mike Kelley

Since his retirement from Silicon Valley to Mexico City in 2002, Mike combined technology consulting with initiatives to empower the indigenous people of Chiapas with self-sustaining rural enterprises.

From 1999 to 2002, Mike worked at Silicon Image, a technology company that drives industry standards for digital content secure storage and delivery.  One of his innovations was to Silicon Image’s patented method for delivering content from the motherboard to the video display via twisted-pair serial conduits to hard drives.  This eventually resulted in the replacement of bulky parallel cables.

During the 1990’s, his challenge was to open the Latin American market for Sun Microsystems, first in Venezuela and then in Argentina.  He championed Java technology in its infancy, while enabling its rapid spread through partnerships with universities.  Through an initiative dubbed ‘Silicon Barrio’, he encouraged the development of strong innovation capabilities in Argentina.

Mike’s career in the IT industry started with Wang Laboratories, where he worked from 1978 to 1990.  Starting as a developer, he rewrote Wang’s flagship financial solution – GBS – in structured Basic, thus enabling customers to modify and customize this integrated financial system for their requirements.  As Area Director for Latin America, Mike made Wang a strong player in the financial systems market – competing successfully against IBM’s dominance with its mid-size servers.

Like his twin brother John, Mike started his professional life as a college professor.  He taught chemistry at Atlantic Union College in the mid-1970’s.

Mike completed a triple major at Andrews University in chemistry, physics and mathematics.  The Vietnam War interrupted his graduate work at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory at Berkeley.

In his spare time, Mike researches his family’s genealogy, which he has traced back through its Huguenot roots to the murky times of Charlemagne.

Awards

Mike graduated Summa Cum Laude from Andrews University, a considerable achievement given his triple major.  Other distinctions from his student career, less formal but no less important, were earned on the streets of Chicago in 1968 and at People’s Park in 1969.