Tom Dunlap, The Man
Who Wears Many Hats
Wrongly or rightly, most Intel employees go through their careers with labels. You’re an engineer, salesman, finance person or whatever. Tom Dunlap has ignored these categoriza ons. He began his Intel career as a Product Engineer in 1974 and finished as the Corporate Counsel in 2004. He’s also learned to wear a couple of other hats along the way. Tom grew up in the Pi sburgh area and graduated from the “real UC”, University of Cincinna , with a BSEE in 1974. Intel hired him a er gradua on and, as it turned out, was the only company for which he would work. Tom Dunlap He started as a Product Engineer on the 4K DRAM, but he discovered that he could only get 4095 bits to work. He told his boss the failing cell was always gaining charge. He was told that that was impossible. Eventually this issue led to the famous so error problem being discovered. Tom figured that the idea of storing charge on a capacitor would never work, so he decided he might explore an alterna ve career. He enrolled at Santa Clara University Law School at night. He applied for tui on reimbursement at Intel, but HR denied the request sta ng that Intel didn’t need engineers to go to law school. Tom eventually graduated in 1979 and joined the legal department. Tom’s career with the legal department was certainly not boring to say the least. He was the first Intel lawyer with the European legal department in Brussels. In 1983 he became General Counsel, when his predecessor, Roger Borovoy, le the company. Interes ngly, Tom was studying for the patent bar exam at the me. However, he never did take the exam, although he was responsible for many patent trials during his career. He says he tells people that he had the best legal job on the planet during the 1990s. It was an exci ng me for Intel then, and the legal team played a crucial role in its success during that period. The legal team was aided by strong support from Andy Grove. Tom feels his team’s biggest accomplishments were proving the microcode in microprocessors was copyrightable which led to the Pen um processor being sole source for many years and the dismissal of the class ac on lawsuits against Intel a er the tech bubble burst in 2000. Also he takes pride in the fact that the Intel an trust compliance program resulted in Intel never paying a penny in an trust damages. A very interes ng sidebar in Tom’s career occurred in 1978 while he was going to law school. Roger Borovoy asked him whether he would go undercover and work with the police to catch some thieves, who were stealing Intel trade secrets. Eager to do the legal department a favor he readily agreed. Just like in the movies he was wired for sound and played the main role in a “s ng”. Tom as “Aun e Trust “ in Intel Leads’ L INTE
He met with the criminals at one of their girlfriend’s apartment off Lawrence Expressway and nego ated a $2M deal to buy Intel mask sets. Tom said the alert code words were “It’s a deal”. When the police heard those words, they were supposed to come in and make the arrest. Unfortunately for Tom, he said it wasn’t like the movies. It seemed to take forever before the police showed up. Eventually the arrest of the two thieves was made, they were convicted and served me in prison. So you can add the job of “Intel Undercover Cop” to Tom’s resume. Tom re red from Intel in 2004 a er 21 years as General Counsel; however, his associa on with Andy Grove was not over. About a year later Andy asked him to nego ate a contract between Kine cs, a subsidiary of the Grove Founda on, which funds research into Parkinson’s disease, and Intel. Intel was to develop a device to objec vely measure the progression of the disease. Ul mately the work done on this project morphed into an app you can download on your smartphone. Andy then convinced Tom to take on the role at Kine cs to manage projects to study the physics of infusing drugs into the brain. Tom had returned to his engineering roots. Tom wasn’t done changing hats yet. In 2013 he decided he wanted to gain deeper knowledge of the financial world. So he enrolled in UCLA extension finance planning courses. He felt that formal instruc on would be more rigorous than just reading books on the subject. His inten on was not to become a Cer fied Financial Planner, but make himself become more proficient to manage his family’s money. It’s not all work for Tom. He’s an avid golfer, who is a regular par cipant at the annual Ex‐Intel Gol um tournament, where he had a “Hole in One” in 2012. HO
LE‐I
N‐O
NE GO
L FE
R When I asked Tom what were some of the traits he took away from Intel, he listed two. First, is the one‐on‐one. He employs this technique on walks with his wife and daughters (no wri en agendas). He’s even started doing this with his 19 month‐old granddaughter, Mia; just playing with Ampa. He’s working on the “Gr”. Tom celebra ng his hole‐in‐one Tom having a 1:1 with Mia Secondly, he cited Construc ve Confronta on as a useful prac ce as long as you emphasize the word “construc ve”. He’s found that when and if you join non‐Intel organiza ons, and you use construc ve confronta on properly, change can occur. Some advice Tom would like to impart to fellow re rees or those employees contempla ng re rement is as follows: 
Set goals for yourself. He’s found that days can just fly by unless you have set some sort of goal for yourself. By doing this you can achieve con nuous improvement in a sport, health, personal finances or working with a nonprofit organiza on. 
Re rement gives you an opportunity to do the things you want to do. Take the me to enjoy them. Once you decide what those things are, many of the Intel values can help you make it come true. If you’d like to discuss re rement goals, golf or how best to do a one‐on‐one with your grandchild, Tom can be reached at [email protected].