Santa Clara University

Rick Wallace, MS Engineering Management'89

Interview with Rick Wallace, CEO of KLA-Tencor

Please describe your current position.
I am chief executive officer (CEO) of KLA-Tencor, the world’s largest supplier of inspection and metrology systems to the global semiconductor industry.

What do you enjoy most about your current position?
As CEO, I work with the some of the top executives of the largest semiconductor companies in the world, including; Intel, Samsung, TSMC, AMD, Sony, Toshiba, and many others. Because our products are critical to their current and future planning and manufacturing, we collaborate on very advanced technologies involving the industry’s top scientists and technical talent. I enjoy working on a global basis with both customers and KLA-Tencor’s own international workforce.

Describe your most recent employment history prior to your current position.
I joined KLA (later KLA-Tencor) in 1988 as an applications engineer, and have been fortunate to work in many growth areas, including applications engineering, new product development, global market development, and eventually matriculated into management to be executive vice president of the company’s Wafer Inspection Group. I was later appointed President and Chief Operating Officer before becoming CEO in 2006.

Tell us about your educational background.
I received my Bachelor’s Degree in Electrical Engineering (EE) from the University of Michigan and my master's degree in Engineering Management from Santa Clara University.

Why did you choose SCU for your master’s in engineering degree?
I began my career working in a fab at Cypress Semiconductor and originally went back to graduate school to get my masters in EE in order to better understand the technology behind semiconductor devices. As my career progressed, I realized I wanted to better understand the business behind running a fab and I was leaning toward management.  The SCU program was  highly flexible and allowed me to shift my masters degree from EE to Engineering Management, combining both technology and business disciplines.  One reason I chose the MS degree in Engineering Management from Santa Clara University was because I could keep working while studying for the degree. The SCU Engineering Management curriculum was fast-paced and focused on both marketing and management. The program’s quality was among the best in Silicon Valley and Santa Clara University has a very impressive reputation. The program’s scheduling was oriented for the working professional, which was very important to me.

What impressed you most about your instructors and/or fellow students at SCU?
My fellow students were highly motivated high-tech professionals, whose goals were to improve their knowledge and further their careers, leading to positions in upper management. The faculty was very knowledgeable and was able to bring practical experience to their curriculum, which was valuable.

What else do you remember from your degree program at SCU?
While many people will tell you that education is critical to your career development, in my case it is clear that my education at SCU was significant to my career development.  In one of my final classes at SCU I did a paper on U.S. competitiveness.  It was a topic that I was very interested in because I was working in the semiconductor industry, which was undergoing massive change in the competitive landscape.  The paper that I wrote was a comparison of companies that were competing in the critical photolithography technology. 

Like many industries, the U.S. had created the photolithography market with companies such as GCA and Ultratech only to lose their competitive advantage to two Japanese competitors, Nikon and Canon.  The final assignment was both a paper and a presentation. After my presentation I talked to my advisor, Dr. Parden, who was also the Chair of the Engineering Management Program at the time.  I told Dr. Parden that I was really going to miss SCU and that I had a great deal of passion about U.S. competitiveness.  He asked if I would consider teaching a class on the topic.  I was excited by the idea and spent the next several months working on a syllabus for the class.  That is how I became an adjunct instructor in the same program where I had earned my graduate degree.  

This was very important to me because I was highly motivated to give back to SCU.  I wanted to give back to SCU because I felt that I had benefited from the highly motivated instructors that I had the privilege to learn from while I was there.  I decided to base the class on the book, “Made in America: Regaining the Productive Edge.” This highly influential book summarized research about the decline in U.S. industrial performance from an international perspective.  Among the industries studied was the one in which I was working—semiconductors. While I felt that this topic was important to me professionally, I believed it to be a topic that was important to the students as many of the students were working in Silicon Valley in industries that either had already been or were going to be impacted by global competition.

The work that I did both in my course work and later as part of the faculty at SCU made a difference to me personally and professionally.  It allowed me to broaden my perspective on topics and issues that still influence my decision making today.  I also know that I was inspired by the other faculty members at SCU to make a difference in the lives of the students who dedicated their precious time to pursue their education.  I like to think that I made a difference to the students whom I was fortunate enough to have in my classes for the five years that I taught at Santa Clara University. Anyone who is willing to make the investment in pursuing their education at SCU is going to find that they will have the opportunity to grow both personally and professionally.  I thoroughly enjoyed the nine years that I spent as part of the SCU community.

How has your investment in a SCU degree helped you achieve your goals?
I strongly believe in a lifelong commitment to learning of all kinds. The degree program provided a strong underpinning appropriate to a wide variety of advanced management challenges that I have encountered as an executive, from tactical program management to strategic executive management. 

How would you advise someone who is looking to enter the program?
The degree program is a high-quality program that demands discipline; it requires considerable dedication, time and effort in order to be successful.  Even though the program is quite flexible for the working professional, it’s still a university curriculum and the student needs to dedicate his or her time to it.  It is not easy, so a student needs to maintain a high degree of motivation to complete the program.

Please tell us what distinguishes the Santa Clara program when compared to other universities?
I think the program’s flexibility is important, and it also understands of the challenges of balancing work and life with the degree program. Being in Silicon Valley, it attracts talent from many different kinds of companies and industries, and this diversity is of great value.

What impressed you most about the engineering management program at SCU?
I appreciated the opportunity to learn from both my fellow students, who came from a spectrum of industries and managerial levels, and from the highly experienced faculty. Each class featured very relevant material that was of good practical use in my day-to-day job, as well as my management career.