Michael M. Afergan — Senior Vice President of Products - Asia Pacific & Japan at Akamai

Dr. Michael M. Afergan, also known as Mike, has been Senior Vice President of Products - Asia Pacific & Japan at Akamai Technologies, Inc. since April 2015. Dr. Afergan served as Senior Vice President and General Manager of Web Experience Division of Akamai Technologies, Inc. Dr. Afergan leads the Akamai team responsible for a powerful set of integrated technologies that enable businesses to leverage the web with instant and aware experiences across any device anywhere. With a focus on site optimization, web application acceleration, and mobile, the Akamai Web Experience Division builds products and solutions for the situational performance challenges that are part of today's new web reality. He served as the Chief Technology Officer of Akamai Technologies since October 18, 2005. He works with Akamai Engineering and Product Management to develop and articulate Akamai Technologies Inc.'s technical vision and strategy. He is a veteran of Akamai's distinguished engineering organization. He joined Akamai in 1999 and has served in various roles within Akamai's Engineering and Product Management departments, including Director of Technology Strategy and Director of Load Balancing and Mapping. In these roles, he was instrumental in helping to drive innovation based on customer requirements, working on a variety of Akamai's products and directly with many of Akamai's largest customers. Dr. Afergan was the second employee at Constant Contact, a pioneering software as a service (SaaS) provider, and ran a software consulting company for over ten years, working for a variety of companies ranging from Bose and Fidelity to start-ups. Dr. Afergan previously ran a software consulting company for over ten years, provided technology training internationally. He serves as a Director of Mercury Payment Systems, LLC. He had been a Director of Mercury Payment Systems, Inc. since 2010. He has also designed and led several technology training courses internationally. At MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and at Harvard, he has conducted research in the areas of networking and distributed systems. This includes the impact of economic incentives on networked systems, reliable networking and content distribution protocols, and wireless protocols and architectures. He has authored a number of academic publications on these topics. He served as a teaching fellow and guest lecturer at Harvard University. He has authored several academic papers, trade magazine articles, and books including Java Quick Reference (Macmillan), which is translated into six languages. He returned to graduate school in September 2003, and has come back to Akamai full time after receiving his PhD in Computer Science from MIT, where his research focused on networking and distributed systems. Dr. Afergan graduated magna cum laude with highest honors from Harvard College with an A.B. in Computer Science and a focus on Economics. He holds a S.M. from Harvard University and a PhD from MIT, both in Computer Science. He is also a graduate of the Greater Boston Executive Program from the Sloan School at MIT.