Friday, May 2, 2008

OLPC taps CFO Kane as president and COO

One Laptop Per Child reports it has appointed Chuck Kane president and COO.

According to the Cambridge-based nonprofit, Kane will be responsible for operational matters and third-party negotiations. OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte will focus on fundraising and promoting the project to governments worldwide, OLPC said.

Kane previously served as the nonprofit's CFO. Before joining OLPC, he served in executive and senior level finance and operations roles at companies including Aspen Technology, Corechange Software, Informix Software, Stratus Computer and Prime Computer. Most recently, Kane was CFO at Bedford's RSA Security during its $2.3 billion acquisition by EMC Corp. of Hopkinton.

Last month, OLPC appointed former Mexican secretary of foreign affairs Jorge G. Castañeda to its board of directors.

There had been a string of public OLPC upsets recently. For instance, in March, OLPC's director of security architecture, Ivan Krstic, resigned due to what he describes as a conflict related to the organization's goals and aims.

In January, OLPC's CTO Mary Lou Jepsen left to start an organization focused on commercializing some of the OLPC's technology, such as the screen and battery. Later that month, Intel Corp. resigned from the board of OLPC, just more than five months after joining in July 2007.

In November 2007, OLPC was sued in a Nigerian court by Lagos Analysis Corp. for alleged copyright infringement related to the XO laptop's multilingual keyboard. Lagos Analysis, which is seeking $20 million in damages, is a U.S.-based, Nigerian company with offices in Natick.

OLPC was launched in 2005 by Nicholas Negroponte, an MIT professor, with the mission of providing $100 laptops to those who couldn't otherwise afford them. While there has been much discussion about the fact that the price is closer to $200 now that units are shipping, the nonprofit's executives have reported that large-scale production cost savings could help bring the price back down to $100 per laptop.