Francis Aurelio deSouza (; born December 2, 1970) is an American entrepreneur and business executive. He is co-founder of SynthLabs, and a member of the Board of Directors of Deel Inc. He was previously the

chief executive officer A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a chief executive or managing director, is the top-ranking corporate officer charged with the management of an organization, usually a company or a nonprofit organization. CEOs find roles in variou ...

(CEO) of Illumina. Before Illumina, deSouza was president of products and services at Symantec. He joined Symantec in 2006 when Symantec acquired IMlogic, where deSouza was founder and CEO. Prior to IMlogic, deSouza worked at Microsoft from 1998 to 2001 after Microsoft acquired Flash Communications, where deSouza was co-founder and CEO.

Personal life

He was born in

Addis Ababa Addis Ababa (; ,) is the capital city of Ethiopia, as well as the regional state of Oromia. With an estimated population of 2,739,551 inhabitants as of the 2007 census, it is the largest city in the country and the List of cities in Africa b ...

Ethiopia Ethiopia, officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country located in the Horn of Africa region of East Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the north, Djibouti to the northeast, Somalia to the east, Ken ...

, to a mother of Ethiopian and

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

descent, Elpinki, and an Indian father of

Konkani __NOTOC__ Konkani may refer to: Language * Konkani language is an Indo-Aryan language spoken in the Konkan region of India. * Konkani alphabets, different scripts used to write the language **Konkani in the Roman script, one of the scripts used to ...

descent, Domingos. He was the second of five children. His mother was a homemaker and his father was a commercial representative for Japanese trading company

Itochu is a Japanese corporation based in Umeda, Kita-ku, Osaka and Aoyama, Minato, Tokyo, Aoyama, Minato, Tokyo. It is one of the largest Japanese ''sogo shosha'' (general trading and investment companies) distinguished by the strength of its textil ...

. Before he was 5, his family moved to

Dubai Dubai (Help:IPA/English, /duːˈbaɪ/ Help:Pronunciation respelling key, ''doo-BYE''; Modern Standard Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic: ; Emirati Arabic, Emirati Arabic: , Romanization of Arabic, romanized: Help:IPA/English, /diˈbej/) is the Lis ...

United Arab Emirates The United Arab Emirates (UAE), or simply the Emirates, is a country in West Asia, in the Middle East, at the eastern end of the Arabian Peninsula. It is a Federal monarchy, federal elective monarchy made up of Emirates of the United Arab E ...

. In 1987, at age 16, he graduated from St. Mary's Catholic High School, Dubai, UAE and was admitted to the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...

(MIT). He graduated

Tau Beta Pi The Tau Beta Pi Association (commonly Tau Beta Pi, , or TBP) is the oldest engineering honor society and the second oldest collegiate honor society in the United States. It honors engineering students in American universities who have shown a ...

, Eta Kappa Nu and

Sigma Xi Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Honor Society () is an international non-profit honor society for scientists and engineers. Sigma Xi was founded at Cornell University by a faculty member and graduate students in 1886 and is one of the oldest ...

from MIT in 1992 with

Master of Science A Master of Science (; abbreviated MS, M.S., MSc, M.Sc., SM, S.M., ScM or Sc.M.) is a master's degree. In contrast to the Master of Arts degree, the Master of Science degree is typically granted for studies in sciences, engineering and medici ...

and

Bachelor of Science A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, B.S., B.Sc., SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree that is awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Scienc ...

degrees in electrical engineering and computer science and a minor in economics. Desouza was divorced in 2017 and has 2 children. Desouza invested in bitcoin in 2013 and the division of their

cryptocurrency A cryptocurrency (colloquially crypto) is a digital currency designed to work through a computer network that is not reliant on any central authority, such as a government or bank, to uphold or maintain it. Individual coin ownership record ...

assets in the divorce became a subject of dispute, drawing attention to how cryptocurrency assets are treated in divorce.

Career

Early in his career, he worked at the

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

Thomas J. Watson Research Center and then in management consulting.

Flash Communications

In 1997 DeSouza co-founded and was CEO of Flash Communications, a provider of corporate instant messaging that was acquired by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

in 1998.

Microsoft

Following Microsoft's acquisition of Flash, deSouza joined Microsoft and became a product unit manager, where he led the team responsible for the development of the company's enterprise real-time collaboration offerings, including

instant messaging Instant messaging (IM) technology is a type of synchronous computer-mediated communication involving the immediate ( real-time) transmission of messages between two or more parties over the Internet or another computer network. Originally involv ...

, chat,

voice over IP Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), also known as IP telephony, is a set of technologies used primarily for voice communication sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet. VoIP enables voice calls to be transmitted as ...

and NetMeeting.

IMlogic

DeSouza left Microsoft in 2001 and founded IMlogic, where he was CEO and grew the company into the market leading provider of instant messaging security.

Symantec

DeSouza joined Symantec through the company's acquisition of IMlogic in February 2006. DeSouza was president of products and services at Symantec until November 11, 2013. He led the research, product management, engineering, customer support and operations for Symantec's offerings, which generated $6.73 billion in revenue in FY11.

Illumina

DeSouza was appointed president of Illumina, Inc. in November 2013, leading the company in envisioning, developing, and producing products. In 2016, he was also appointed CEO. On June 11, 2023, DeSouza announced that he was leaving Illumina.

SynthLabs

DeSouza co-founded SynthLabs in July 2023, a startup developing technology for an auditable, transparent and robust AI alignment platform. SynthLabs' investors include Microsoft's M12 and First Spark Ventures.

Board member

deSouza is on the Board of Directors of Deel Inc. He was on the Board of Directors of

The Walt Disney Company The Walt Disney Company, commonly referred to as simply Disney, is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios complex in Burbank, California. Disney was founded on October 16 ...

from February 2018 to April 2024."Disney adds two board members from tech world"
''

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' is an American Newspaper#Daily, daily newspaper that began publishing in Los Angeles, California, in 1881. Based in the Greater Los Angeles city of El Segundo, California, El Segundo since 2018, it is the List of new ...

''. and Citrix Systems from December 2014 to June 2016.

Accolades and recognition

* Top CEOs 2019 on Glassdoor * Top CEOs 2018 on Glassdoor * Top Businesspersons of the Year #10 on ''

Fortune Fortune may refer to: General * Fortuna or Fortune, the Roman goddess of luck * Luck * Wealth * Fate * Fortune, a prediction made in fortune-telling * Fortune, in a fortune cookie Arts and entertainment Film and television * ''The Fortune'' (19 ...

'' global list of (2018) * 40 under 40 - ''Silicon Valley Business Journal'' (2007)Silicon Valley Business Journal
"People to watch"
/ref>

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Desouza, Francis 1970 births Living people American technology company founders American technology chief executives Directors of The Walt Disney Company American business executives American chief executives of manufacturing companies American computer businesspeople American management consultants MIT School of Engineering alumni American people of Greek descent American people of Indian descent American health activists American corporate directors American information technology businesspeople Businesspeople in software Gen Digital people Businesspeople from the San Francisco Bay Area Ethiopian emigrants to the United Arab Emirates Ethiopian emigrants to the United States