Samuel S. Coursen, Jr.
Sam Coursen retired in 2011 as the Chief Information Officer of Freescale Semiconductor, a spin-off of the Motorola Company, after a 40+ year career in the technology industry.
Sam started his career in 1969 as a co-op engineer alternating quarters between school at Auburn University and work at AT&T Long Lines in Atlanta, Georgia. He graduated from Auburn in 1973 with a BS degree in Electrical Engineering and began his full time corporate career within the AT&T Long Lines Engineering Organization.
In 1974, Sam was appointed to a technical position at AT&T Bell Laboratories in Naperville, Illinois developing electronic telephone switching systems. In 1979, he was appointed District Manager in Bedminster, NJ responsible for development of operations support systems supporting AT&T’s global communications network. In 1985, he was appointed District Manager responsible for the UNIX Standard Operating Environment (SOE) within AT&T. In 1987, he was appointed Division Manager responsible for all of AT&T’s internal data center and network computing services.
In 1993, Sam joined the NCR Corporation in Dayton, Ohio, a part of AT&T at that time. Over time he held various senior management positions within NCR. In 1993 he became Vice-President responsible for NCR’s product architecture (the “Open Cooperative Computing Architecture” (OCCA)). In 1995, he was appointed Vice President of Services, responsible for development and global deployment of NCR’s external service offerings (professional services and customer support services). In 1997, he was appointed Vice President of Global Applications, responsible for development, global deployment, and support of the IT applications supporting NCR’s global business operations. In 1998, he was appointed VP & CIO of the company, responsible for all information technology enabling NCR’s world-wide business operations.
In 2005, Sam retired from AT&T / NCR and accepted the position of Vice-President and Chief Information Officer (CIO) of Freescale Semiconductor in Austin, Texas. In this position he was responsible for IT supporting all Freescale operations, leading a global organization of IT professionals and outsource partners located in all geographic regions. He was directly responsible for all IT applications, data and voice services, data center services, distributed computing services, and end user services. Among Sam’s achievements were managing the transition to best-in-class cost structure while simultaneously delivering a significantly enhanced IT application portfolio as well as benchmark level IT infrastructure services.
In April 2011, Sam retired from Freescale. He currently provides executive coaching and mentoring for IT managers targeted for career advancement. He is married with four adult children and continues to reside in Austin, Texas.