Jim Barksdale is the Chairman of the Board and president of Barksdale Management Corporation, a philanthropic investment company. He has more than 35 years of operational experience. He served as president and CEO of Netscape
Communications Corporation from January 1995 until the company
merged with America Online in March 1999. Upon completion of that merger, Barksdale joined Time Warner’s Board of Directors.
A graduate of The University of Mississippi, Barksdale began his career at IBM. In 1979, he joined Federal Express Corporation as chief information officer and later executive vice president and chief operating officer. In 1992, he became the chief operating officer of McCaw Cellular which later became AT&T Wireless Services. Barksdale rose to chief executive officer for AT&T Wireless before
joining Netscape.
In 1997, Netscape received the “Entrepreneurial Company of theYear” award from both Stanford and Harvard University Business School alumni groups. Computer Reseller News named Barksdale “#1 Executive of the Year,” PC Magazine named him “Person of the Year” and he was recognized as the Executive of the Year at the 1997 European Technology Roundtable Exhibition Conference in Budapest. He has been inducted into The University of Mississippi Hall of Fame, the Mississippi Business Hall of Fame and the Memphis Society of Entrepreneurs.
In 2000, Barksdale gifted $100 million to the State of Mississippi to establish The Barksdale Reading Institute. This joint venture with the Mississippi Department of Education and the state’s public universities strives to improve reading skills among Mississippi children from birth to the third grade.
In 2005, following Hurricane Katrina, Governor Haley Barbour appointed
Barksdale to chair the Governor’s Commission on Recovery, Rebuilding and Renewal. The commission devoted more than 50,000 volunteer hours to planning for restoring the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
Barksdale serves on the boards of several corporations and foundations, including Federal Express, Time Warner, the Mayo Clinic (Chairman), Sun Microsystems, Inc. and In-Q-Tel. He was also appointed to the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board by President George W. Bush and served as co-chair of the Markle Foundation Task Force on National Security in the Information Age.
Barksdale and his wife, Donna Kennedy, recently created the Mississippi Principal Corps at Ole Miss that will change the way school principals are trained. Jim and Donna have six children and six grandchildren.
