Mark Lonergan

Mark Lon­er­gan is the Founder and Man­ag­ing Part­ner of Lon­er­gan Part­ners. He spe­cial­izes in CEO and Board place­ments in tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies. His recent CEO and senior exec­u­tive assign­ments include such clients as: Mod­el N, Gig­a­mon, Bro­cade, Xil­inx, Infin­era, Fortinet, Infoblox, Mar­ke­to, Shore­Tel, Gold­man Sachs, and many oth­er tech­nol­o­gy companies.

Since 1992, Mark has con­duct­ed over 500 tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny CEO, Board, and senior exec­u­tive assign­ments. He is cur­rent­ly Chair­man of the Board (and out­go­ing CEO) of the Sil­i­con Val­ley Direc­tors’ Exchange (for­mer­ly the SVNACD), work­ing with the Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty Rock Cen­ter for Cor­po­rate Gov­er­nance to edu­cate cor­po­rate boards in the Sil­i­con Valley.

Read Mark’s lat­est blog here What CEOs Need From Their Boards

Pri­or to found­ing Lon­er­gan Part­ners, Mark was the Man­ag­ing Part­ner for the Sil­i­con Val­ley offices of Hei­drick & Strug­gles, Inc. [NAS­DAQ: HSII]. Mark co-found­ed and lat­er man­aged Heidrick’s glob­al Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions and Inter­net Prac­tice, com­posed of seventy‐​five exec­u­tive search teams glob­al­ly. Pri­or to his work with Hei­drick & Strug­gles, Mark was Vice Pres­i­dent, Sales & Mar­ket­ing, at ADC Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions, a $2 Bil­lion pub­lic telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions equip­ment sup­pli­er, now part of Tyco Inter­na­tion­al. Ear­li­er, Mark spent ten years with Tym­net (now a sub­sidiary of British Tele­com) in posi­tions of increas­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty includ­ing Dis­trict Sales Man­ag­er, East­ern Region Sales Man­ag­er, and Direc­tor of Field Operations.

Mark has a Mas­ters Degree in Busi­ness Admin­is­tra­tion from The Kel­logg Grad­u­ate School of Man­age­ment at North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty. He is also a grad­u­ate of Van­der­bilt Uni­ver­si­ty with a degree in British His­to­ry, with Honors.

I’ve been on both sides of the table

I’ve been very lucky in my career, join­ing a Sil­i­con Val­ley tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny right out of col­lege and help­ing grow that com­pa­ny (Tym­net, a pio­neer in data com­mu­ni­ca­tions net­work­ing) into a glob­al operation.

The right stuff

While the styles of these lead­ers dif­fer great­ly, they seem to share a com­mon set of prin­ci­ples that dri­ve com­pa­nies to become great — they believe in their peo­ple, they expect the best from every­one in their orga­ni­za­tions, they’re pas­sion­ate about inno­va­tion, and they strive to become the best in the world at every­thing they do.

This is the great secret of the Sil­i­con Val­ley — if you shoot high enough and demand the best, you can become a world leader in the tech­nol­o­gy market.