18 Facts About Carl Yankowski

Carl J Yankowski was an American businessman who served as the CEO of Palm, Inc and Ambient Devices.

Carl Yankowski gained simultaneous degrees in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and management from the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Carl Yankowski took a humanities minor in Art History at Wellesley College, as one of the first men to attend.

Carl Yankowski developed new products and promotional campaigns for Pringles and Duncan Hines mixes.

Carl Yankowski then moved to Memorex where he helped develop the first high-performance cassette tapes, and with Ella Fitzgerald worked on the "Is It Live Or Is It Memorex" campaign before joining Pepsi, expanding Mountain Dew, launching 2L plastic bottles and back-lit vending machines, and working on the three-year Pepsi Challenge campaign for PepsiCo, beating Coke in market share for the first consistent time.

Carl Yankowski then worked in the US and London as divisional CEO of Cadbury Schweppes, focused on new soft drink delivery systems.

Carl Yankowski then returned to the United States to become the president and CEO of Sony Electronics in November 1993, almost doubling the US businesses by $5 billion, and launching PlayStation, VAIO, CDMA phones, and DVD, as well as DirectTV, Web TV, and others.

Carl Yankowski left Sony in January 1998 "to address immediate family health issues".

Carl Yankowski became president and chief executive officer of the Reebok Brand in September 1998, initiating cost-cutting and a turnaround, as well as a re-focus on women and fitness.

Carl Yankowski joined 3Com to head its Palm division on 13 December 1999.

Carl Yankowski gained notoriety for his appearance on a CNBC interview on the day of the Palm IPO, during which he wore a bespoke suit embroidered with gold pinstripes.

Carl Yankowski left Palm on 8 November 2001 when the OS Group was spun out by the board, and most technology companies were caught up in the dot-com crash, and set up a management consultancy under the name 'Westerham Group'.

Carl Yankowski led Majesco for a ten-month period until he discovered the recent sales forecasts for Psychonauts and Advent Rising were dramatically missed in this essentially family-owned business.

Carl Yankowski was asked to remove himself from the company.

Carl Yankowski was a board member of flat-panel color display pioneer Uni-Pixel, Inc, which has developed a potentially more efficient display method called TMOS, as well as non-fingerprint films, and unique embossing technology for touch screens and similar applications.

Carl Yankowski represented Intel Capital on the board of Telligent in Dallas, a leading corporate social networking and analytics company.

Carl Yankowski died in Butler, Pennsylvania, on May 13,2023, at the age of 74.

Carl Yankowski is portrayed by English actor Cary Elwes in the 2023 biopic BlackBerry, directed by Matt Johnson.