Joe Mohen

Mohen was born in the New York City borough of Queens, the oldest of twelve children of Joseph Conrad Mohen (1935–2017) and Virginia Ann (Kelly) Mohen (born 1935), both descendants of Irish immigrants. His maternal great-grandfather, James Morris, an immigrant from Liverpool, was one of the first full time staff of any motion picture studio, being hired by Adolph Zukor in 1912, at Famous Players, making sets for the silent films at Chelsea Studios in Manhattan; Famous Players was later merged with a competitor and renamed Paramount Pictures. In 1960, when Mohen was four, the family moved to Garden City on Long Island. There he attended a local Catholic School, St. Anne's, and later an Episcopal Preparatory School, St. Paul's; while in high school he attended Boys State, and was captain of the Cross Country and Track teams. He was offered a track scholarship to the University of Akron, which he declined, instead electing to attend Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore where he studied Mathematics and Biochemistry, and Manhattan College in New York City studying Business.

Mohen started his career working for Chase Bank on Wall Street, and became an officer at Citibank at 24 years old. Having worked as a software engineer for six years, Mohen became a Certified Computer Professional in Systems Development in 1985. The following year he founded Proginet Corporation, which he served as CEO of until September 1996, and remained a Chairman through 1998. In 1987, Proginet created a complex software package called XCOM, which sold in 1992 to a predecessor company of Computer Associates, and was one of the software products to span more than eleven computer operating systems. The renamed CA-XCOM was sold by Computer Associates through 2017. As CEO, Mohen secured equity stakes from both Novell and Microsoft in Proginet; Proginet was later acquired by Tibco Software. Mohen also was a contributing editor and columnist for eWeek, Data Communications Magazine, and Network World; in 1989, he wrote a widely quoted article, called "Seeking a Cure for the Vaporware Epidemic", writing "my own estimate is that at the time of announcement, 10% of software products don't actually exist... Vendors that are unwilling to [prove it exists] shouldn't announce their packages to the press", blaming the press for not investigating claims by developers, saying "If the pharmaceutical industry were this careless, I could announce a cure for cancer today – to a believing press."

In 1990-1992, Mohen was a committee member for setting standards for Open Systems Interconnections Protocols, with representatives from computer and telecommunications organizations from around the world.