Ed Colligan was president

President

A president is a leader of an organization, company, trade union, university, or country.Etymologically, a president is one who presides, who sits in leadership...

 and CEO of Palm, Inc.

Palm, Inc.

Palm, Inc., was a smartphone manufacturer headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, that was responsible for products such as the Pre and Pixi as well as the Treo and Centro smartphones. Previous product lines include the PalmPilot, Palm III, Palm V, Palm VII, Zire and Tungsten. While their older...

 Colligan is currently working at the private equity firm Elevation Partners

Elevation Partners

Elevation Partners is an American private equity firm that invests in intellectual property and media and entertainment companies. The firm has $1.9 billion of assets under management....

, a major financial backer of Palm.

Colligan was president and CEO of Handspring

Handspring (company)

Handspring was a maker of Palm OS-based Visor- and Treo-branded personal digital assistants. It was run by Jeff Hawkins, Donna Dubinsky, and Ed Colligan, the original inventors of the Palm Pilot and founders of Palm Computing, after they became unhappy with the direction in which 3Com was taking...

 prior to the Palm/Handspring merger in 2003. Before Handspring, he led the marketing campaign at Palm, Inc. that launched the Palm family

PalmPilot

The PalmPilot Personal and PalmPilot Professional are the second generation of Palm PDA devices produced by Palm Inc...

 of PDAs

Personal digital assistant

A personal digital assistant , also known as a palmtop computer, or personal data assistant, is a mobile device that functions as a personal information manager. Current PDAs often have the ability to connect to the Internet...

 and smartphone

Smartphone

A smartphone is a high-end mobile phone built on a mobile computing platform, with more advanced computing ability and connectivity than a contemporary feature phone. The first smartphones were devices that mainly combined the functions of a personal digital assistant and a mobile phone or camera...

s. Earlier in his career, he served as vice president of strategic and product marketing for Radius Corporation

Radius (computer)

Radius was an American computer hardware firm founded in May 1986 by Burrell Smith, Andy Hertzfeld, Mike Boich, Matt Carter, Alain Rossmann and other members of the original Mac team specializing in Macintosh equipment....

.

He graduated in 1983 with a bachelors degree in political science

Political science

Political Science is a social science discipline concerned with the study of the state, government and politics. Aristotle defined it as the study of the state. It deals extensively with the theory and practice of politics, and the analysis of political systems and political behavior...

 from the University of Oregon

University of Oregon

-Colleges and schools:The University of Oregon is organized into eight schools and colleges—six professional schools and colleges, an Arts and Sciences College and an Honors College.- School of Architecture and Allied Arts :...

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