Jo Major
Chairman of the Board, President, and Chief Executive Officer
Dr. Jo Major is Chairman of the Board,
President, and Chief Executive Officer
of Avanex. He has an extensive record
of accomplishment as a senior executive
in tier-one businesses. Dr. Major’s
experience includes internal
and acquisition
expertise in product development and
introduction, especially with regard
to driving the development of highly
differentiated products from the design
stage to manufacturing.
Dr. Major has spent 14 years with JDS
Uniphase Corporation and with SDL,
Inc. before its merger with JDS in
2001. At JDS Uniphase, he served successively
as Senior Vice President and General
Manager of the Components Business
Group, as Vice President and General
Manager of the Active Components Business
Group and as Vice President and General
Manager of the Optical Pump Business
Unit.
At various times during his career
with JDS Uniphase, Dr. Major was responsible
for business unit profit and loss,
customer and product line marketing,
product development, product engineering,
contract negotiation and forecasting,
as well as rationalization and loading
of factories in San Jose and Santa
Clara, California; Victoria, British
Columbia; Plymouth, United Kingdom;
Ewing, New Jersey; Windham, Connecticut;
Eindhoven, Holland, and Shenzhen,
China. His product line responsibilities
included pump lasers, receivers, source
lasers, and lithium niobate modulators;
all passive product lines, including
passive modules, and waveguide product
groups.
Dr. Major began his professional career
at SDL, Inc. as a Research Scientist.
He subsequently was promoted to Staff
Scientist, to Senior Engineering Section
Manager of the Communications Business
Unit, to Director of Product Development
of the Communications Business Unit
and to Director of the Communications
Business Unit.
At the time of the SDL and JDS merger,
he was Vice President of the Optical
Pump Business Unit, with responsibility
for all pump laser products, erbium-doped
amplifiers, Raman amplifiers and fiber
Bragg gratings
As a Research Scientist, he was involved
in the first demonstration and commercial
introduction of the 980 nm pump laser
diode, the commercial introduction
of 2 micron lasers and the commercial
introduction of high-power 250 mW
852 nm pump lasers for atomic (Ce)
clocks. These devices remain the highest
power frequency-stabilized laser diodes
ever commercialized.
Dr. Major earned his Ph.D., M.S. and
B.S. in electrical engineering from
the University of Illinois. He was
an Intel Fellow from 1988-1990, and
also has studied finance, marketing
and business management at Stanford
University.
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