Mike Lazaridis

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Mike Lazaridis

Mihalis (Michael) Lazaridis (born 1961, Istanbul, Turkey) is the founder and co-CEO of Research In Motion (RIM), which created and manufactures the wildly popular BlackBerry Wireless Handheld (similar to a PDA but with more emphases on communication functions). He is also the chancellor of the University of Waterloo, and an Officer of the Order of Canada. Just before graduating in Engineering from Waterloo, Mike dropped out to pursue his entrepreneurial dream. With a $15,000 loan from his Greek immigrant parents, a small government grant and a contract from General Motors, he, Mike Barnstijn and Douglas Fregin launched RIM and got to work on creating one of Canada's most successful high-tech start-ups.

1 Early life and education
2 Philanthropic work
3 Awards and accolades
4 External links
5 Footnotes

[edit] Early life and education

Born in Turkey to Greek parents, Mihalis Lazaridis was five years old when his family migrated to Canada in 1966, settling in Windsor, Ontario. A voracious reader from an early age, Lazaridis won a prize at the Windsor Public Library at age 12 for reading every single science book in the library.^[1] In 1979, he enrolled at the University of Waterloo in Electrical Engineering with an Option in Computer Science. He dropped out in 1984 just two months before graduation, having been offered a lucrative contract from General Motors for the nascent RIM.

He is married to Ophelia Lazaridis. They have two children, Cleo and Kern.

[edit] Philanthropic work

On October 23, 2000, Lazaridis founded the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics with $100 million of personal funds, along with $10 million contributions from fellow RIM executives Jim Balsillie and Doug Fregin.

On April 30, 2004, Lazaridis and his wife together donated $33.3 million to the University of Waterloo for its Institute for Quantum Computing.

On May 3, 2005, Lazaridis gave an additional $17.2 million to the University of Waterloo, primarily to aid the construction of a new building jointly shared by the Institute for Quantum Computing and the Nanotechnology Engineering program.

[edit] Awards and accolades

On October 21, 2000 he received an honorary Doctor of Engineering degree from the University of Waterloo, and in June 2003 became its 8th chancellor. He was named Canada's Nation Builder of the Year for 2002 by readers of the Globe and Mail newspaper, and has received various other accolades as a result of his financial success and philanthropic efforts. In 2006, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada and a member of the Order of Ontario ^[2].