Alan Trefler

Last updated

Alan N. Trefler
Born (1956-03-10) March 10, 1956 (age 68)
Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
Alma mater Dartmouth College
OccupationBusiness executive
Years active1977–present
Employer(s) Pegasystems (CEO, founder)
Board member ofPegasystems
AwardsStevie Award – Software CEO of the Year (2009)
Website www.pega.com/about/leadership/alan-trefler

Alan N. Trefler (born March 10, 1956) is an American billionaire businessman and chess master [1] best known as the chief executive officer (CEO) of Pegasystems, [2] a multinational software company he founded in 1983. [3] Prior to Pegasystems, in 1975 Trefler tied for first place in the World Open Chess Championship with grandmaster Pal Benko, [1] afterwards working as a software engineer for Casher Associates and TMI Systems. [3] Founding Pegasystems at the age of 27, [4] he took the company Public in 1996, [5] with Trefler remaining clerk and president until 1999 [3] and afterwards becoming CEO. [2] With a 52 percent ownership stake in Pegasystems, his net worth surpassed $1 billion in 2013 [6] and in March 2017 he appeared on the Forbes Billionaire's List for the first time. [7] In 2014 he authored the book Build for Change, which addresses changing consumer markets. [8] Involved in philanthropy, in 1997 he established the Trefler Foundation. [9]

Contents

Early life and education

Alan Trefler was born to a Jewish family in 1956 [6] in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of Dorothy (née Pugatch) and Eric Trefler. [10] Trefler was raised in Brookline, Massachusetts [4] with his brother Leon. [6] [11] His mother, a daughter of immigrants from Eastern Europe, [10] worked as a schoolteacher. [6] His father, a Holocaust survivor who came to the United States [4] from Poland after World War II, [12] owned and operated Trefler's, a restorer of art and furniture. [13] [14] This business is still family owned and operating as of 2021. Working at his family's store while young [4] [11] and starting to play chess around the age of seven, [15] [12] Trefler would later become high school chess champion of Massachusetts [12] and win various regional competitions. [14] He graduated from Brookline High School [4] in 1973. [16] Trefler went on to Dartmouth College, where he studied economics and computer science [6] and remained active in chess. [17] [6] At the age of 19, [11] in 1975 he tied for first place in the World Open Chess Championship [17] [6] in New York with grandmaster Pal Benko. [12] [1] Also at Dartmouth, he was the winner of the John G. Kemeny prize in computing. [3] He graduated with a BS in 1977. [6]

Business career

Software engineering

Although he attained the level of chess master [11] and considered going professional, [14] after Trefler graduated from Dartmouth he moved into software engineering instead. [11] In the early 1980s he developed computer systems that could play chess, [18] later applying the same business techniques to teaching computers how to process business rules. [11] Between 1978 and 1980 [16] Trefler was a senior project manager for Casher Associates Inc., a business process management company in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. [3] He then worked at TMI Systems, where he led the development of their funds transfer product [3] from 1980 to 1983. [16]

Founder of Pegasystems

He founded Pegasystems in April 1983, taking on the roles of CEO and chairman [3] at the age of 27. [4] Expressing frustration with the "primitive" computer systems available for companies such as banks and insurance companies, [12] he states that "when I started Pega, it was with the vision that we could create a set of metaphors –an intermediate visual language that would enable business people to more directly instruct the machine... [and] get the computer to really understand how business people wanted things to work.... And it turns out to be a fairly hard problem to solve." [18] Basing the company in Cambridge, Massachusetts [4] with Citibank as his first client, [11] during the company's early years Trefler focused on providing case management for companies such as American Express. [18]

The company went public in 1996 [5] on NASDAQ. [18] Inventing a number of patents for use in Pegasystems' software architecture, [3] in 1998 Trefler was granted a United States patent for Pegasystems' distinctive rules-based architecture, [11] which provides the framework for Pegasystems' business process management (BPM) solutions. [19] Trefler remained clerk of Pegasystems Inc. until June 1999, and president until October 1999. [3] He remained CEO and chairman of the company's board of directors. [2]

Recent work at Pegasystems

In 2009 Trefler won the Stevie Award for Computer Software CEO of the Year at the American Business Awards. [20] [21] In March 2010, Pegasystems acquired Chordiant for around $161.5 million, [22] which gave Pegasystems access to new markets such as telecommunications and healthcare. [23] The Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council named him their Public Company CEO of the Year in 2011. [21] With a 52 percent ownership stake in Pegasystems, [4] [6] his net worth surpassed $1 billion on November 25, 2013. [6] His Pegasystems salary was $751,526 in 2014. [24] That year, Business Insider ranked him the eighth lowest paid CEO in the tech industry. [25]

In 2014 he authored and published Build for Change, a book focused on the management of customers and business processes. A Forbes contributor related that the book made "a convincing argument" that companies needed to prepare for changes in customer behavior, or face negative repercussions. [8]

Pegasystems had 3,000 employees, 30 offices, and "more than half a billion dollars in revenue" by early 2015. [18] In 2015, courts ruled in Trefler's and Pegasystems' favor in a copyright infringement suit filed by YYZ, a company the press described as a patent troll. [26] Trefler has been recognized by the Babson College Academy of Distinguished Entrepreneurs, [3] and he speaks publicly on business and software topics at various events and conferences. Among other publications, he has appeared in Barron's , the BBC, Forbes , Fortune , The New York Times , The Wall Street Journal , Reuters , [3] and Bloomberg Television. [27] Trefler made the Forbes Billionaire's List in March 2017. [7]

Chess career

A master-level chess player [11] [1] who had been playing chess since his childhood, [12] [15] Trefler competed in the 1975 World Open Chess Championship in New York City. Still a college student at Dartmouth, he entered the tournament with a 2075 Elo rating, 125 points below the lowest master-rated player, ranking him 115th overall in the tournament. [17] He went on to be crowned co-champion along with International Grandmaster Pal Benko, [21] [17] who was rated at 2504. Trefler also placed ahead of Grandmasters such as Walter Browne and Nicolas Rossolimo, as well as future Grandmaster Michael Rohde. [17] Trefler competed in a charity chess tournament in 2010 alongside grandmasters such as Garry Kasparov [6] and Boaz Weinstein. [1]

Philanthropy

Trefler and his wife donated $1 million to Dorchester High School in Dorchester, Boston in 1995. [28] They established The Trefler Foundation [11] in 1997, [9] which seeks to improve urban public education [15] in the Boston area. [11] The Treflers were early supporters of the nonprofit Year Up, [9] and in 2015 they founded Union & Fifth, where proceeds raised from donated clothes benefit various charities. [29]

Personal life

Trefler married his wife Pamela Reinhard in 1992, who at the time was working as an investment banker. The couple reside in Brookline, Massachusetts. [6]

Publishing history

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References

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  2. 1 2 3 "Alan Trefler Profile", Forbes , archived from the original on June 1, 2012, retrieved July 5, 2017
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Alan Trefler Profile, Bloomberg, archived from the original on November 9, 2013, retrieved July 5, 2017
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Farrell, Michael B. (July 5, 2014). "Seven things you should know about Alan Trefler". The Boston Globe .
  5. 1 2 "SEC drops Pegasystems probe". Boston Business Journal . Biz Journals. April 10, 2002. Retrieved July 7, 2017.
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  10. 1 2 "Dorothy (Pugatch) Trefler". The Boston Globe . August 4, 2011. Retrieved July 7, 2017.
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  12. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Wall, Matthew (November 18, 2013). "Alan Trefler: The chess master turned global chief executive". BBC . Retrieved July 7, 2017.
  13. ↑ "Best of Boston 2013 BEST Furniture Restoration – Trefler's". Boston Magazine . Boston. 2013. Retrieved July 7, 2017.
  14. 1 2 3 Wallack, Mark (July 30, 2007). "Alan Trefler – Making his moves". Boston Business Journal . Boston. Retrieved July 5, 2017.
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  16. 1 2 3 Trefler, Alan, Alan Trefler Timeline, LinkedIn , retrieved July 7, 2017
  17. 1 2 3 4 5 Chess Life & Review , September 1975, pp. 586–87.
  18. 1 2 3 4 5 Rogers, Bruce (February 24, 2015). "Alan Trefler's Pegasystems Is on a Mission To Transform Customer Engagement". Forbes .
  19. ↑ USpatent 5,826,250,Alan Trefler,"Rules bases and methods of access thereof",issued 1988-10-20[ dead link ]
  20. ↑ Stevie Awards Listed, Stevie Awards, October 11, 2009, retrieved July 5, 2017
  21. 1 2 3 Trefler, Alan (June 3, 2014). Build for Change. Wiley. ISBN   978-1118930267.
  22. ↑ Henschen, Doug (March 18, 2010). "Pegasystems To Buy Chordiant For $161.5 Million". InformationWeek .
  23. ↑ Goodwin, Bill (November 21, 2013). "Pegasystems CEO Alan Trefler plans his next move for the $500m software company". Computer Weekly .
  24. ↑ "Pegasystems CEO Reported Less Compensation". Boston Business Journal . April 2015. Archived from the original on May 12, 2015. Retrieved July 4, 2017.
  25. ↑ "The Most Overpaid And Underpaid CEOs in Tech". Business Insider . 2014. Retrieved July 8, 2017.
  26. ↑ Twentyman, Jessica (January 24, 2016). "'Patent trolls' on the prowl for 'smart' product providers". Financial Times . Retrieved July 5, 2017.
  27. ↑ Hays, Kathleen (February 26, 2016). "Pegasystem's Trefler on Company's Earnings, Stock Up 8% (Audio)". Bloomberg . Retrieved July 8, 2017.
  28. ↑ Mehren, Elizabeth (May 12, 1998). "A Million Reasons to Go to School". Los Angeles Times . Retrieved July 5, 2017.
  29. ↑ "The Industrial Revolution of software: Alan Trefler, CEO, Pegasys". CIO. July 1, 2015. Retrieved July 8, 2017.
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