Omid Kordestani

Omid Kordestani — Omid R. Kordestani (born 1963, Persian‎) is an Iranian-American businessman who works as Chief Business Officer at Google. He was previously senior advisor at Google’s Office of the CEO and Founders. and serves as Non-Executive Director at Vodafone. Kordestani was the Senior Vice President for Worldwide Sales and Field Operations of Google until he stepped down on April 16, 2009.

Early Life

Omid Kordestani was born in Tehran, Iran and grew up there, attending an Italian Catholic school in Tehran that emphasised education and language skills. He moved to San Jose, California at the age of 14 after the death of his father. He graduated with an electrical engineering degree from San Jose State University and went to work for Hewlett Packard as an engineer. Several years later in order to pursue a business degree, he entered Stanford Business School and earned his MBA in 1991.

Career

Kordestani has more than a dozen years of high-technology consumer and enterprise experience, including key positions at Internet pioneer Netscape Communications. He was Google’s senior vice president of worldwide sales and field operations until April 16, 2009. He joined Google in May 1999, leading the development and implementation of the company’s initial business model. He played a part in Google’s worldwide revenue generation efforts as well as the day-to-day operations of the company’s sales organization. His efforts together with those of others, have transformed the world’s top search destination into online advertising’s hottest property — scoring more than 100,000 advertisers in just 18 months. He was also vice president of Business Development and Sales and grew Netscape’s website revenue from an annual run-rate of $88 million to more than $200 million in 18 months. He started his career at Netscape as director of OEM Sales, and during his four-year career at that company he was responsible for establishing major customer relationships with Citibank, AOL, Amazon, Intuit, Travelocity, Intel, @Home, eBay, and Excite. Prior to Netscape, Kordestani held positions in marketing, product management, and business development at The 3DO Company, Go Corporation, and Hewlett-Packard.

In the May 8, 2006 issue of Time Magazine, Kordestani was named one of Time’s “100 People who shape our world”.

Kordestani is one of the wealthiest residents in Northern California. San Jose magazine estimates his net worth at $1.9 billion.

He was selected as The Persian Person of the Year in 2007 by Persian Awards.