Jennifer Stern has more than 15 years of experience in managing high-tech manufacturing operations for IBM and Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (formed from the merger of IBM and Hitachi's hard disk drive businesses). Her most recent position was as Director of Worldwide Media Manufacturing for Hitachi, where she had responsibility for all of Hitachi's magnetic media production operations, including plants in San Jose, Japan, and Shenzhen, China. As the primary executive responsible for media manufacturing, she drove the strategy to build the first media factory in China, taking the project from board approval to shipping qualified product in 16 months.

Dr. Stern started her IBM career as a post-doctoral associate at IBM's San Jose Almaden Research Laboratory, where she co-authored 7 papers in the emerging field of atomic force microscopy (AFM). She went from there to Burlington, VT, where she managed manufacturing engineering and equipment engineering teams in IBM's largest semiconductor fab. She trained with McKinsey in the development of an activity-based costing program deployed across the site and spent 18 months leading teams to successful cost-reduction strategies. In 1997, Jennifer moved to East Fishkill, NY, where she ran the Microelectronic Division's Y2K program and served as technical executive assistant to the division general manager. She subsequently became production superintendent for IBM's most advanced semiconductor pilot line, focusing on cycle time reduction and new product introduction.

Jennifer relocated to San Jose in 2002 to assume leadership of the media manufacturing business and was responsible for all aspects of production, including supply chain, cost, quality, and customer satisfaction. In this assignment, she traveled extensively throughout Asia, building a strong cross-cultural team among the media organizations in the US, Japan, and China, and working closely with suppliers and customers in Japan, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, and the Philippines.

Jennifer received a PhD in Chemical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology and a BSE degree in Chemical Engineering from Princeton University. She lives in Silicon Valley with her husband, Jeffrey, and two wonderful daughters.