Hong Liang Lu

Hong Liang Lu is the president and chief executive officer of UTStarcom Inc., a telecommunications company that supplies equipment for wireless local-loop networks. With 85 percent of its business in Mainland China, UTStarcom is among the most successful U.S. business operating in Asia.

Forbes recently ranked UTStarcom -www.utstarcom.com- 9th on its list of the 25 Fastest-Growing Tech Companies and BusinessWeek called the Alameda, California company “perhaps the world’s hottest telecom gear supplier.”

Hong Lu, a Taiwanese-born, American-educated entrepreneur, founded Unitech Industries in 1991 to develop digital and wireless transmission systems to help developing countries build their telecommunications systems.

In 1995, Lu helped orchestrate the merger of his California-based company with New Jersey-based Starcom Network Systems Inc., a developer of intelligent network systems. The new company became UTStarcom and brings American fiber optics technology to emerging nations.

From 1983 until 1986, Lu was President and CEO of Unison World, Inc., a software development company that merged with Kyocera International, Inc. in 1986. Lu then served as President and CEO of the majority-owned subsidiary of Kyocera International, Kyocera Unison.

Hong Lu received a B.S. in Civil Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley and speaks Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese and English.

To put himself through graduate school, Lu served as the night-shift manager of an ice-cream parlor in Oakland, California, where he met fellow Berkeley student and future business associate, Masayoshi Son, the Japanese billionaire who now heads Softbank Corporation, and who bought 30% of UTStarcom’s shares.