Richard Hay Jr. Named New Director of McCormick Office of Corporate Relations.

Richard “Chip” Hay Jr., a software industry market development executive, was recently named director of the Office of Corporate Relations at the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science at Northwestern University.

The office helps build relationships between McCormick and corporate partners by working to arrange sponsored research partnerships, facilitating access to faculty research and expertise, and providing customized access for recruiting undergraduate and graduate students.

“Chip is an excellent addition to McCormick,” says McCormick Dean Julio Ottino. “His experience spans across both industry and academia, and he brings much needed IT experience to the table. He will be able to leverage that experience into new corporate connections, which are increasingly important to both sides. He comes into a position that already has great support — I’d like to thank interim director Joe Firca and associate director Allison Berger for their remarkable efforts in creating new industry connections over the past two years, a period of considerable difficulty in the US economy.”

After receiving a BA and PhD from Northwestern University, Hay Jr. has served as vice president of marketing and chief marketing officer for a number of early-stage software companies including Odesta Corporation, Documentum, Inc., Commerx, Inc., Code Green Networks, and Morgan Street Document Systems. He was a key member of the founding management team of Documentum that grew the company from a venture-backed start-up to a market leader and a successful IPO. He has taught courses on database management and information systems at the Kellogg School of Management and has published articles and books in the areas of urbanization and socioeconomic development and evaluation research methodology.

Hay is currently a member of the founding team of Syapse — an early stage company spun out of Stanford developing cloud-based software to accelerate the development of biomedical products.

“I’m thrilled to be a part of corporate relations at McCormick,” Hay said. “I’m excited to return to Northwestern and use my experience and expertise to help link companies to the dynamic and innovative work being done at McCormick.