David Duffield Biography

David Duffield (born 1941) is an American businessman in the software industry. He is the co-founder and former chairman of PeopleSoft, the co-founder and co-CEO at Workday, Inc., and has been on the Forbes World's Richest People list.

Early life

Duffield received a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering and an MBA from Cornell University, and is the benefactor behind Duffield Hall, a nanoscale science (or nanotechnology) and engineering facility at Cornell.

Career

Dave Duffield established two mainframe application software companies. He was CEO, chairman, and chief product architect at Integral Systems, the first company to offer DB2-based human resource and accounting systems. He also co-founded Information Associates, which specialized in applications for the higher education market. He began his career at IBM as a marketing representative and systems engineer.

Peoplesoft

Duffield founded PeopleSoft in 1987 and served as the company's CEO and board chairman. PeopleSoft grew to be the world's second-largest application software company before being acquired by Oracle in January 2005.

Workday

In March 2005, Duffield and former PeopleSoft vice chair and head of product strategy, Aneel Bhusri, started Workday, a company that provides financial management and human capital management software delivered in a Software as a Service (SaaS) model. The company is headquartered in Pleasanton, Calif., and employed approximately 1,000 people in 2011, with Duffield and Bhusri serving as co-CEOs at Workday. Duffield is also the company's chief customer advocate.

Philanthropy

Duffield is also known for his philanthropic activities on behalf of animals. Dave Duffield and his wife, Cheryl, created Maddie's Fund in 1999 to support the No-kill effort. Maddie's Fund is named for their Miniature Schnauzer, Maddie. The fund has an endowment of $300 million.

Personal life

He is married to Cheryl Duffield.