LUCZO
Stephen

• 1. Early life
• 2. Early career

Stephen J. "Steve" Luczo  is the Chairman of the Board at Seagate. In January 2009, Luczo, Seagate's chairman, was appointed president and chief executive officer, returning him to the role he held at Seagate from 1998 to 2004. He held the position of CEO again from 2009 until October 1, 2017, at which time Dave Mosley became CEO. During the period after Luczo's return as CEO in 2009, Seagate's stock appreciated by 1600%, placing it among the top 5 performing stocks in the S&P 500.

Early life

Stephen Luczo was born on February 28, 1957, in Chicago, Illinois at Augustana Hospital. He is the youngest of three sons of Thomas and Rose Luczo. The family moved to Park Ridge in 1959, where Luczo lived until 1976 when he moved to California to attend Stanford University. Luczo attended public schools through high school and attended the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in 1975–76, before transferring to Stanford in September 1976. He holds a BA, economics and psychology, and MBA from Stanford University.

In 1979, Luczo earned a BA in Economics, with honors, and also completed a major in Psychology, from Stanford University. Luczo received the Laura Myer Award for the outstanding undergraduate honors thesis in the Economics Department. His work centered on break through analysis concerning the decline in the African American fertility rate between 1890–1940. Luczo's work focused on detailed statistical analysis of census data attributes, which correlated the decline in family size as direct decisions of African Americans to address economic conditions and opportunities. While such considerations, and conclusions, had been attributed to the white decline in fertility over the same time period, prior to Luczo's work, most historians attributed the decline in African American fertility to issues related to health and disease. In addition to his work in Economics, Luczo completed all requirements for a Psychology major, while at Stanford. He specialized in Neuropsychology, and took several graduate level courses including extensive work with Karl Pribram. Luczo wrote several research papers on memory systems in the human brain, specifically addressing and supporting Pribram's thesis of holographic constructs in the human brain.

Luczo returned to Stanford in 1982, where he attended the Graduate School of Business (GSB). He graduated in 1984 and concentrated his course work in finance. While at the GSB, Luczo was a co-founder (along with Robert Moog, Dave Bagshaw, and Scott Setrakian) of the Hercules Horseshoe Club ("HHC") and of the Hard Core Awards. Both activities were centered on fostering cooperation and conversation between teachers, administrators and students. Luczo still holds the record for most consecutive match wins at the HHC.

Early career

After graduating from Stanford in 1979, Luzco was hired as a staff accountant in the audit practice of Touche Ross & Co., one of the original "Big Eight" accounting firms. Luczo was the first non-accounting major hired by the firm to work in the audit group. During his first year, he was assigned to assist the City and County of San Francisco in transitioning to a new, then state of the art, mini computing system. During the transition, the City lost control over its cash and payables system, and Luczo was assigned to a 3-member special team appointed by Mayor Dianne Feinstein, to resolve the system issue, which had resulted in a $200 million discrepancy between the cash system and the payable system. The issue was resolved within 5 days and as a result, Luczo was offered the opportunity to lead system deployment at any of 5 major City Departments.

Luczo left Touche Ross in 1980 to pursue the system development and deployment at the Port of San Francisco, which was transitioning from a Sperry Univac 1005 to a Microdata Minicomputer. He was responsible for managing all systems and application architecture and development for the Port, reporting to the chief financial officer. In late 1981 he was promoted to acting CFO of the Port, and resigned in August 1982 to attend the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

After graduating from the Stanford GSB in 1984, Luzco joined Salomon Brothers, Inc. He attended the 1984 Salomon Brothers training program (a year before Michael Lewis, as described in Liar's Poker), and was hired into the Municipal Finance Department, and was based in San Francisco. Salomon Brothers was the leading underwriter of Municipal Bonds nationally as was the Firms West Coast office, under the leadership of Terry Atkinson. Luczo financed a wide variety of municipal projects including those for the Irvine Ranch Water District, the LA Department of Water and Power ("LADWOP"), the Metropolitan Water District of LA, the Orange County ("John Wayne") Airport, the University of Arizona, the Central Arizona Water Project, the Sisters of Providence Health Care System, and the Santa Clara Water District. Luczo was involved with over 50 financings, which provided billions of dollars of funding for important infrastructure, educational and health care projects.

Stephen Luczo was the Senior managing director of the Global Technology Group of Bear, Stearns & Co. Inc., an investment banking firm, from February 1992 to October 1993. Prior to joining Bear, Stearns & Co., he was an investment banker at Salomon Brothers, Inc. from 1984–1992. While at Salomon Brothers, Luczo led the investment banking team for Seagate when it acquired the Imprimis Disk Drive Unit from Control Data in 1989. Subsequent to his advisory work for Seagate, Luczo advised Control Data in the formation of Ceridian and Control Data Systems.