Jonathan I. Schwartz

Schwartz was born in Southern California, and spent much of his childhood moving between the West Coast and Washington, D.C., graduating in 1983 from Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School in Bethesda, Maryland. With aspirations of becoming an architect, in 1983 he entered college at Carnegie Mellon University, and subsequently transferred to Wesleyan University in 1984. At Wesleyan, he ran short of funds and was preparing to drop out, when a friend suggested he apply for a scholarship, the Gilbert Clee Scholarship. He was awarded the scholarship, which funded the remainder of his university expenses. He received dual degrees in mathematics and economics.

In 1987, Schwartz was nearly killed while riding on the Amtrak Colonial train that crashed in Chase, Maryland. He is cited in interviews as saying the incident had a profound impact on his life.

Schwartz started his career in 1987 at McKinsey & Company in New York City. In 1989, Schwartz left McKinsey and moved to Chevy Chase, Maryland, where he was a co-founder of Lighthouse Design, a company focused on building software for NeXT Computer, Inc. In the early 1990s, Lighthouse Design moved to San Mateo, California. Eventually, Schwartz became chief executive officer of Lighthouse.

In 1996, with NeXT failing in the marketplace and the internet beginning to explode globally, Lighthouse was acquired by Sun Microsystems.

He began his career at Sun working for Eric Schmidt, then the head of Sun Labs. After Schmidt's departure for Novell, Schwartz became the director of product marketing for JavaSoft in 1997 and then transitioned through a series of vice president positions. In 2004, Schwartz was promoted to president and chief operating officer of Sun. He eventually succeeded Scott McNealy as CEO in April 2006.