SEED Engineering Mentoring Program

SEED was Sun Microsystems Engineering's world wide employee mentoring program, 2001-2010. SEED program participants were expected to rise to the top of Sun Engineering's individual contributor or management ranks. Greg Papadopoulos (Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice President of Research and Development) was SEED's executive sponsor. SEED was managed by Katy Dickinson Director, Business

Process Architecture, in the Chief Technologist's Office. In more than 30 terms, there were over 1,000 SEED participants and over 500 mentors World-wide. Over 70% of SEED mentors were Vice Presidents, Fellows, Distinguished Engineers, or Directors. During ten years, the SEED program had a proven track record of strong diversity, very high satisfaction, high regard by management, and high retention. SEED participants as a group earned more promotions and higher performance ratings than Sun overall. Sun Microsystems (and SEED) transitioned to being part of Oracle in 2010.