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The Sikh Foundation

May 2003

Satjiv Singh Chahil

 Satjiv S. Chahil is currently Advisor to the Chairman of Palm Inc., a Board Member of PalmSource, Inc., and Chairman of Mobile Digital Media (MDM), a mobile content publisher. He is widely recognized as a high-tech industry pioneer and convergence driver. In a career spanning over 25 years with some of the industry’s most prominent innovators, including IBM, Xerox, Apple, Sony and Palm, Satjiv has established a reputation as a trend-maker and market-builder. 

At Palm Inc. he and his team built Palm’s brand cachet and helped establish the new category of mobile computing. Similarly, he played a prominent role in introducing the Sony Vaio products into the US market. 
Earlier he was credited with building Apple’s pre-eminent market position in Japan and leading the efforts to turn personal computers into multi-media communication devices. 
Additionally, Satjiv has played a key catalyst role in driving multilingual, multimedia and communication standards, including Unicode, QuickTime, CD-ROM, DVD, IEEE 1394, and most recently, Secure Digital (SD) expansion.
He is known as an innovator with a reputation for “making things happen”- and doing so faster and at lower cost than one would think possible. By grasping the strategic implications of product technologies and corporate capabilities he effectively aligns impactful tactics to achieve dramatic results consistent with the goals of the corporation. 
He was featured in a cover story in Inc. Magazine’s “Marketing Computers” special edition in December 1996, for his singular achievements in “keeping the Apple brand alive during its darkest days.” He did this by globally aligning Apple’s brand with BMW, Tom Cruise, Independence Day, Disney and the Grammy's. Not only did he add new vigor and excitement to Apple’s marketing during turbulent times, but he has had similar achievements throughout his career. In 1992, for example, Satjiv was challenged with bringing Apple technologies to the forefront of the rapidly emerging convergence of computing, communications, and content. In a period of just three months he conceived and executed a global “Convergence Summit” at Mt. Fuji in Japan, drawing CEO’s from around the globe, and providing a dazzling display of Apple’s leadership in the convergence domain. Under his leadership, Apple became a world leader in multimedia, with particularly strong ties to the creative communities in the publishing, advertising, film, and music industries. As a founding management member of Apple’s Pacific Division, Satjiv established Apple as the standard of innovation in Japanese industry; the first American computer company to gain a significant presence and become the most preferred brand in Japan. Under his guidance, Apple Pacific became the company’s fastest growing and most profitable division.

Prior to joining Apple, Satjiv served at Xerox as a Strategic Business Unit General Manager for multilingual workstation products, as well as in other pioneering roles that involved setting up alternate channels of sales and distribution, and developing the business practice of competitive benchmarking. 
Earlier, he held planning and control, and marketing management positions in the Data Processing Division at IBM.
Satjiv holds a masters degree from the American “Thunderbird” Graduate School of International Management, Arizona and has been a featured speaker at global technology conferences, as well as at Harvard, Stanford, and The Sorbonne.

As a devout Sikh, Satjiv has been actively distributing for the last ten years, the Sri Guru Granth Sahib translation sets published and authored by his father, S. Pritam Singh Chahil. This translation of Guru Granth Sahib is the first of its kind in the fact that it has been published in a unique three-column format. The first column contains the writings in the original Gurmukhi Script identical to the Guru Granth Sahib’s in the Gurdwaras (Sikh place of worship) followed by the second column, which is the transliteration in Roman Script to help in pronunciation. Finally the third column is the English translation of the verses in the first column. The same format has been followed throughout from beginning till end. 
Following the tragic events of September the 11th, 2001 Satjiv and a few other Sikhs of the San Francisco Bay Area founded the Sikh Communications Council with an objective of raising awareness and education about Sikhism and Sikhs in North America. The Sikh Communications Council has and continues to execute various much needed and laudable public relations and image building projects for the Sikh community.

Press Reports on Satjiv