Biography | Paul Otellini — The Economics Degree He Finished on This Hilltop

People treat Intel chiefs as products of engineering labs south of the Bay.

Otellini's first degree was economics on a Jesuit hill in the city he never left.

Paul Stevens Otellini was born in San Francisco on 12 October 1950, the son of Dave Otellini, a butcher, and Evelyn Ghezzi Otellini.

The California Birth Index records the county. The New York Times obituary and the family notice in the Chronicle both keep the city, not a suburban hospital name.

He grew up a second-generation Italian San Franciscan, at Holy Name Grammar School and St. Ignatius College Preparatory.

The high school still shared the Hilltop with the university until it moved to the Sunset in 1969. This pin is the campus that remained.

He took a bachelor's degree in economics from the University of San Francisco in 1972.

The White House Council biography and Intel's own archived executive bio both give that year and that major.

The Foghorn, the student paper, later recalled him in an economic-history classroom and in the business fraternity Delta Sigma Pi.

His father had wanted a priest. His brother Steven did become a priest.

He stayed on this hill and chose finance.

The church on Parker Avenue is the public face of the same Jesuit lot. Stand on the steps and the city falls away toward Golden Gate Park.

He would keep a San Francisco address for the rest of his working life and drive the hundred-mile round trip to Santa Clara rather than move south.

Photo: J. Ash Bowie, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons