New Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson is a Stonehill College graduate
Harvard students helped start Microsoft and Facebook. A Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumnus co-founded Intel Corp. and helped give birth to Silicon Valley.
Now little-known Stonehill College has its own technology superstar. Yahoo Inc. today named Scott Thompson, an accounting major from the private Catholic school in Easton, as its new chief executive.
“A lot of things form the basis of who you are,” Thompson said in an interview, “and I give Stonehill the appropriate amount of credit for helping shape me along the way.”
Having an alumnus lead one of the Internet’s biggest brand names certainly adds some luster to the college, overshadowed by its Ivy League neighbors whose former students have become the glitterati of Silicon Valley.
Born in Taunton, Thompson grew up in nearby Raynham. He still speaks with a thick local accent, which the Wall Street Journal called the “best New England accent in corporate America since Jack Welch.”
Thompson had been the president of eBay Inc.’s online payment division PayPal and is replacing Carol Bartz, whose rocky tenure at Yahoo ended in September when she was forced out by the company’s board.
Michael Farrell can be reached at michael.farrell@globe.com.
