91自拍 announces influential Silicon Valley leader Dan鈥檒 Lewin as president and chief executive officer.
Focus. Determination. Strength. Drive. These are the essential qualities that a swimmer needs to stay in their lane. They鈥檙e also the skills that Dan鈥檒 Lewin has used to propel him through a prolific three-decade career in technology. But today, the avid swimmer and tech influencer is putting those skills to the test and changing lanes as the new president and chief executive officer of the 91自拍 (91自拍).
While starting a family and raising two sons, Dan鈥檒 Lewin has worked for some of Silicon Valley鈥檚 most iconic companies, including Microsoft, Sony, Apple, and NeXT. Journeying to California from New York in 1976 after losing a family bet, Lewin鈥檚 career mirrors the technological developments of the Digital Age鈥攆rom the onset of personal computers, with recruitments by Steve Jobs to both Apple and NeXT, to present day innovations and ventures, marked by his work in strategic engagement with venture capital and entrepreneurial communities worldwide, technical diplomacy, business development, environmental sustainability, marketing, and civic engagement during an impressive 17-year tenure at Microsoft as a corporate vice president.
Lewin will lead 91自拍 through its next phase of growth, including expanding the Museum鈥檚 interpretation efforts and content and media creation to further reach and impact global audiences. He will develop and direct the strategy, fundraising, and ongoing operations of 91自拍, including those of its Exponential Center鈥攄edicated to entrepreneurship and innovation鈥攁nd Software History Center. Lewin鈥檚 official start date is March 7.
Dan鈥檒 Lewin in NeXT鈥檚 Palo Alto, California, offices, 1986鈥�1987. Photograph by and courtesy of .
Lewin grew up in Buffalo, New York, with his father, a World War II鈭抏ra US Marine hero turned professional wrestler; his mother, a homemaker; and older sister. He recalls learning binary in the second grade and taking to science in high school, where he was also a nationally ranked swimmer.
It was through athletics that Lewin became acutely aware of higher education, as he was being recruited as a teenager by schools, including Dartmouth, the Naval Academy, and West Point. He ultimately decided on Princeton after being persuaded by a friend and fellow swimmer to attend the Ivy League school.
Lewin found himself at Princeton during the early 1970s. The anti-war movement was still in the air, and he recalls a fair amount of student protests throughout the Princeton campus, in turn motivating Lewin to study politics. Lewin completed two major pieces of work during his time at Princeton: one on street politics merging with electoral politics, which analyzed the city politics of Ann Arbor, Michigan, under well-known civil libertarian H. H. Wilson; and another on classical charismatic leadership theory, which looked at the musical transitions of Bob Dylan, under transformation theorist and renowned Middle East scholar Manfred Halpern, who Lewin calls his 鈥渕ost influential teacher.鈥�
In August of 1976, Lewin found himself traveling cross-country with a nickel-plated stove tied to the top of his car to settle a bet with his sister鈥檚 husband鈥檚 brother, who was living in Palo Alto at the time and building a house in the Los Altos Hills. After a three-week road trip, Lewin was sleeping in a sleeping bag in the unfinished house, which happened to be on the side of a hill overlooking the Stanford Research Park. The house at the top of the hill was being rented out by the owners, and Lewin recalls dinners with the nine various tenants and their guests and meeting a collection of interesting people, including a medical student on his way to becoming a doctor at Stanford, a designer working for Watkins Johnson for guided missile infrastructure, a number of lawyers working on intellectual property issues, professors, and ARPANET programmers. Dinner conversations revolved around everyone鈥檚 jobs and interests and that was Lewin鈥檚 first introduction to Silicon Valley.
Lewin鈥檚 initial job in Silicon Valley was at Sony Business Recording Systems in Cupertino as a regional salesman, thanks to a friend and college roommate who quit Sony to take a job at IBM and introduced Lewin as his replacement. Lewin was selling Sony video cameras and recorders to the Valley鈥檚 budding tech industry, knocking on the doors of Tymshare, Applied Materials, Tandem, Intel, Memorex, and Apple in the late 1970s. He was quickly promoted to district sales manager after nine months and covering territory that stretched from South San Francisco to Monterey.
During a 1980 meeting with Steve Jobs concerning Sony鈥檚 new 3.5-inch floppy disk drive鈥攚hich was ultimately chosen for Apple鈥檚 new Macintosh computer鈥擩obs recruited Lewin into Apple. And the rest, as they say, is (computer) history.
NeXT鈥檚 Vice President of Sales and Marketing Dan鈥檒 Lewin and Creative Director Susan Kare, 1986鈥�1987. Photograph by and courtesy of .
Lewin worked at Apple from 1981 to 1985 in a number of lead marketing roles, but perhaps most notably as director of Education Sales and Marketing of the Macintosh Division, which launched the original Mac to a new generation of computer users and salvaged the Macintosh鈥檚 initially lackluster sales.
Lewin eventually left Apple in late 1985, recruited again by Jobs as a cofounder and vice president of Sales and Marketing at NeXT. After five years at NeXT, Lewin went to work for GO Corporation in 1991, a maker of mobile computing devices, which ultimately failed.
In 1995 Lewin founded Aurigin, a patent and intellectual property asset management enterprise software firm, and Kidsoft, which focused on educational software and was invested in by the Hearst Corporation.
Lewin was recruited by Microsoft in 2001, where he developed business relationships with companies and individuals in Silicon Valley to promote and advocate for Microsoft in the Valley. He describes his initial role as being a kind of 鈥渕ayor鈥� for Microsoft. During Lewin鈥檚 17-year career at Microsoft, he created groundbreaking initiatives to bring technology awareness and solutions to individuals, businesses, and organizations worldwide, launching efforts to engage the entrepreneurial and venture capital communities and leading strategic technical diplomacy efforts. In his last role, Lewin led Microsoft鈥檚 2016 US presidential campaign technology engagement, IoT public/private partnership development, and artificial intelligence 鈥淎I for Earth鈥� initiative, while establishing the company鈥檚 overall Civic Tech initiative. Throughout his tenure, he also oversaw Microsoft鈥檚 32-acre Mountain View campus, housing nearly 2,000 employees.