Former Cisco CEO John Morgridge holds most of his fortune in Cisco shares. After a stint as a Honeywell executive, he became Cisco's chief in 1988. He took the company public in 1990, stepped down in 1995 and became a billionaire the following year as the company's stock continued to climb. Morgridge and his wife, Tashia, are avid philanthropists. They have given numerous gifts to his alma maters: the University of Wisconsin, where he went for undergrad, and Stanford University, where he earned his M.B.A. Their $100 million gift to Wisconsin, announced in November 2014, is the largest gift by a... Read More
Former Cisco CEO John Morgridge holds most of his fortune in Cisco shares. After a stint as a Honeywell executive, he became Cisco's chief in 1988. He took the company public in 1990, stepped down in 1995 and became a billionaire the following year as the company's stock continued to climb. Morgridge and his wife, Tashia, are avid philanthropists. They have given numerous gifts to his alma maters: the University of Wisconsin, where he went for undergrad, and Stanford University, where he earned his M.B.A. Their $100 million gift to Wisconsin, announced in November 2014, is the largest gift by an individual donor in the school's history. An avid hiker, Morgridge is a former chair of the Nature Conservancy, which uses private funds to buy and protect land from development. Read Less
