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As of 2016, Chen was a trustee of Caltech and of the charitable organisation, The First Tee, and a governor of the San Francisco Symphony.

Chen was appointed executive chairman of the board and interim CEO of BlackBerry Ltd in November 2013, responsible for the company's strategic direction, strategic relationships and organizational goals. He served as a director on the board of the Walt Disney Company from 2004-2019 and of Wells Fargo & Company from 2006-2018, and as of September 2016 maintains stock holdings in both companies valued in the single-digit millions of dollars. He has also served on the board of the CIT Group Inc., and as a member of the New York Stock Exchange's listing advisory committee, as well as the boards of several high-tech start-ups, including Beyond.com, Niku Corporation, Wafer Technology, and Turbolinux US.

Chen has also received awards from the US-Asia Institute (2009), the U.S.-China Policy Foundation, and the California-Asia Business Council (2007). In addition, the U.S.-Pan Asian American Chamber of Commerce Education Foundation has recognized Chen for his corporate board work.

In July 2007, Sybase announced that Chen, its CEO, had been awarded the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year for Northern California.

Chen is actively involved in international relations. U.S. President George W. Bush appointed Chen to serve on the President's Export Council (in 2005), and as co-chair of the Secure Borders and Open Doors Advisory Committee. He has testified before Congress on U.S.-China trade relations.

The Brown University School of Engineering awarded Chen its Brown Engineering Alumni Medal (BEAM) in 2003.

Chen became CEO of Sybase in 1998. As John Gallant and Eric Knorr noted in IT World, Sybase had been a strong competitor of Oracle, but had become a "dead company" after failing to enter the market for enterprise applications, as Oracle had. Chen and his team proceeded to reinvent Sybase as an "enabler of the 'unwired enterprise'". In so doing, Chen and his team led a re-invention strategy that moved the mature, slower growth technology company into being a high-growth innovator, valued at $6 billion in 2010. This involved improving its balance sheet and returning Sybase to profitability, including by leveraging its existing database knowledge to create new products to address the emerging markets for analytics and mobility. Sybase achieved strong financial performance and shareholder returns under Chen’s leadership, including 55 consecutive quarters of profitability, $2.8 billion of cash generated, and a 28 percent compound annual growth rate of its market capitalization (from a low of $362 million to $5.8 billion through 2010). Sybase was acquired in 2010 by SAP AG.

Chen has been an invited member, since 1997, of the Committee of 100 (C-100) organisation of "Extraordinary Chinese Americans."

Chen next joined Siemens Nixdorf as a vice president in 1995. He was promoted to president and chief executive officer of Siemens Nixdorf's Open Enterprise Computing Division in 1996.

Chen began his career in 1979 as a design engineer with Unisys, where he eventually served as vice president and general manager of, in turn, the Convergent RISC Platform Division and the Convergent UNIX Systems Group. In 1991 he joined Pyramid Technology Corporation as executive vice president. Chen was elected president, chief operating officer and a director of Pyramid in 1993, serving until 1995.

A native of Hong Kong, Chen studied at La Salle College in Hong Kong until Form 5, before going to the United States and graduating from Northfield Mount Hermon School, a preparatory school in Northfield, Massachusetts. He went on to graduate from Brown University in 1978 with a B.S., magna cum laude in electrical engineering, and in 1979, with an M.S. in electrical engineering from Caltech.

John S. Chen (Chinese: 程守宗 ; pinyin: Chéng Shǒuzōng ; Jyutping: cing sau zung ; born July 1, 1955) is a Hong Kong-born American businessman serving as executive chairman and chief executive officer of BlackBerry Ltd. Previously, he served as the chief executive officer and president of Sybase, an independent software vendor specializing in data management, analytics, and mobility technology. He is currently a director of Wells Fargo & Company and Walt Disney Company.