Jerry S. Rawls

Jerry S. Rawls currently serves as Finisar Corporation's Chairman. Finisar was started by Jerry Rawls and Frank H. Levinson in 1988. The Rawls College of Business and The Rawls Course at Texas Tech University are named for him. On October 2, 2003, Rawls Hall at Purdue University was also named in honor of Rawls.

Rawls was born in Houston, Texas, and graduated from Bellaire High School in Houston in 1962. He then entered the engineering program at Texas Tech. He earned his Bachelor of Science of Degree in Mechanical Engineering from Texas Tech University in 1967 and went on to earn a Master of Science Degree in Industrial Administration from Purdue University’s Krannert Graduate School of Management in 1968.

After leaving Purdue he joined Raychem Corporation, a materials science and engineering company in Menlo Park, California and began a twenty-year career with them. He served in various capacities including National Sales Manager and Manager of Product Marketing. During his last six years there he was General Manager of two divisions.

In 1988 Rawls and a partner founded Finisar Corporation, a fiber optics company. The goal for Finisar was to build cost effective gigabit optical transceivers to provide the optical input and output for high-speed computer networks. In 1992 Finisar proposed using multi-mode optics to dramatically lower the cost of gigabit optical links in data centers. Finisar’s proposal for gigabit multimode optics was adopted by the ANSI committee as the basis for today’s Fibre Channel Standard and later by the IEEE as the Gigabit Ethernet Standard.

In 1999 the company went public and raised $149.3 million. By the close of trading on the first day Finisar stock rose 373%, making Finisar the seventh largest first day gainer in the history of Wall Street at that time. The company now employs 9,000 people and has facilities and operations in California as well as in Dallas, Philadelphia, Boston, Champaign-Urbana, Malaysia, Singapore, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Sydney, Tel Aviv, Sweden, Denmark, and Korea.

While at Texas Tech, he played freshman basketball, was a member of the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity, the Saddle Tramps, the Student Senate, the Inter-fraternity Council, and the engineering honor societies Tau Beta Pi and Pi Tau Sigma.

Mr. Rawls has been a member of IEEE since 1980, is on Tech’s Rawls College of Business Dean’s Advisory Council, and Purdue’s Krannert School Deans Advisory Council. He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by Purdue University and has been a Distinguished Alumni Lecturer for Purdue’s Krannert Graduate School of Management. Forbes Magazine included Jerry in one of its lists of Corporate America’s 500 Most Powerful People.