Technology company Oracle has appointed former US Secretary of Defense and former director of the Central Intelligence Agency Leon Panetta to the company’s board of directors, Business Cloud News (BCN) said.
“We are honored to welcome Secretary Panetta to our Board, ” said Larry Ellison, chairman of the board of directors and chief technology officer.
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“Secretary Panetta is a dynamic leader with a distinguished record of public service at the highest levels of government. He will add deep expertise and brings a fresh perspective to our board, ” added Michael Boskin, chair of the nomination and governance committee and Oracle board member, the report said.
Panetta will be one of 12 board members at the Redwood Shores, Calif., company. Oracle focuses on engineering hardware and software, The Hill said.
Panetta is a career bureaucrat and politician. He served in the Obama Administration as US Secretary of Defense from 2011 to 2013 and as director of the CIA from 2009 to 2011, BCN said.
He was White House Chief of Staff and Director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Clinton, and from 1977 to 1993 served as a member of the US House of Representative, the report said.
Panetta is the latest former high-ranking US public official to join the tech world in a board member capacity. In March last year year Colin Powell, a retired four-star general and former U.S. secretary of state under the Bush Administration, joined the board of directors at Salesforce, BCN said.
Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice joined the board of storage service Dropbox last year amid controversy over her past support for state wiretapping programs, Computer Business Review (CBR) said.
Board members at Oracle are elected on one-year terms, with all of the directors expected to stand at the firm’s next shareholder meeting in November, CBR said.
