Biography | Paul Otellini — The MBA He Took in Barrows Hall

People point at the Haas courtyard on Piedmont Avenue and call it the room where Otellini became a manager.

That courtyard opened in 1995. In 1974 the School of Business Administration still shared Barrows Hall.

He finished a Master of Business Administration at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1974.

Intel's archived biography, the Obama White House page, and the Haas alumni magazine all give the same year.

Berkeley's own 1995 account records the move. The College of Commerce began in South Hall in 1898, became the School of Business Administration in 1941, and occupied Barrows Hall from 1964 until the new complex opened.

Barrows Hall is a ten-storey tower at the southeast edge of campus. Campus officials removed the Barrows name in 2020. The building is now the Social Sciences Building. The concrete is the same.

A 2004 CNET profile says he left Berkeley with three offers: Fairchild Semiconductor, Advanced Micro Devices, and Intel.

He took Intel.

Haas later claimed him as its own. He sat on the school board in 2002 and 2003, was named Business Leader of the Year in 2006, and with his wife Sandy gave one million dollars toward Chou Hall.

The gift is real. The classroom he used is this older tower, not the donor building.

Photo: Flask, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons