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James Kinsella (entrepreneur)

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James Kinsella
Born (1959-10-10) October 10, 1959 (age 64)
St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.
NationalityAmerican, British
Alma materHaverford College
OccupationTech entrepreneur
Notable workCovering the Plague, 1989
SpouseRobert McNeal

James Kinsella (born 10 October 1959) is an American tech entrepreneur and former journalist and helped develop some of the earliest web- and cloud-based ventures in the United States and the European Union. He is considered a pioneer of early, web-based digital media.[1][2][3] He served as president of MSNBC.com in the 1990s and as CEO at Interoute Communications, Ltd.

Early life and education

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James Kinsella was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the youngest of six children. One of his brothers is John Kinsella,[4] a neonatologist and professor at the University of Colorado Medical School.[5]

Kinsella graduated from Lindbergh High School in St. Louis County, Missouri and Haverford College.[6]

Career

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Business and journalism

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Kinsella worked as a journalist for several U.S. media companies, including the Los Angeles Herald Examiner and Time. While on sabbatical from the Herald Examiner, where he was the editor of the editorial pages, Kinsella was a fellow at Columbia University's Garnett Center for Media Studies.[7] His research of media coverage of the AIDS epidemic, first published by the New England Journal of Public Policy in 1988, formed the basis of his 1989 book Covering the Plague, which tells how the media and medical experts "fumbled" the AIDS story.[8][9]

Kinsella was a founder of the first major media company's web-based venture, Time's Pathfinder.[10] He later managed Microsoft's joint media venture with NBC, MSNBC, launched in 1996. He served as a vice president at Microsoft and president of the Microsoft-managed part of the venture, MSNBC.com.[11]

In June 2000, Kinsella became chairman and CEO of World Online, the European equivalent of AOL owned by the Sandoz Family Foundation.[12][13] The company had gone public in the spring of that year but was quickly dogged by the revelation that its founder and chairwoman, Nina Brink, had secretly sold shares at a drastic discount to the flotation price.[14] Kinsella replaced Brink as chairman and CEO and quickly set about cutting costs, including cancelling the private plane Brink had leased as well as stopping a multimillion-euro ad campaign featuring Sarah, Duchess of York.[15] Kinsella eventually merged World Online with its Italian competitor, Tiscali, in a sale valuing World Online at $5.1 billion.[16]

Following the merger, Kinsella became chairman and CEO of the Sandoz Family Foundation's other major investment in European technology, Interoute Communications Ltd. The company was launched in 1996 to develop a pan-European digital infrastructure for the booming web-based sector but suffered from the collapse of the dotcom bubble. In 2002, Kinsella brought Interoute out of bankruptcy. The move was controversial because it resulted in the loss of hundreds of jobs.[17] A subsequent partnership with Greek operator OTE to provide high-speed bandwidth to Greece[18] in the run-up to the Olympics helped the company survive.[19]

In the aftermath of the dot-com bubble and financial crisis of 2007–2008, Interoute acquired a series of heavily discounted European assets, including the failed KPNQwest's Ebone network[20] and one of the world's first business-to-business Internet service providers, PSINet Europe.[21]

In response to the rise of data-privacy concerns and the emerging General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Kinsella launched a European-based competitor in the data storage and sharing industry, called Zettabox. The company was described by the European Commission as "an example of a genuinely European cloud storage solution"[22] and a "GDPR by design" alternative. He was widely referenced in the media as a GDPR entrepreneur.[23]

Interoute was sold to GTT in March 2018 for $2.3 billion (€1.9 billion).[24]

Kinsella is a founding partner at D4 Investments, a Seattle- and London-based early stage investor.[25]

Non-profit and foundation work

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Kinsella was a founder in 1996 of the Internet Content Coalition,[26] a not-for-profit association of producers and distributors of original content on the Internet. Its primary role was to help create a responsible and business-friendly environment through advocacy, education, standardization and policy, with the secondary goal of preventing laws that might block the development of the Internet's creative potential.[27]

Two decades later, as a tech executive in the European Union, Kinsella worked to develop privacy tools to combat rampant violation of individual users' data. He also lobbied the European Union on implementation of the GDPR.[28] He subsequently pushed for the adoption of a US version of the GDPR.[29]

The Robert McNeal and James Kinsella Family Fund supports efforts to close the income inequality gap, including scholarship programs and a student emergency fund, as well as support of LGBTQ rights, such as funding the Spectrum Club at the United States Air Force Academy.[30][31]

Personal life

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He is married to Robert McNeal, his longtime business partner who is also a former pilot and officer in the US Air Force.[32][failed verification]

References

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  1. ^ McCullough, Brian (2018). How the Internet Happened: from Netscape to the iPhone. New York, NY, USA: W. W. Norton. pp. 73–74. ISBN 9781631493072.
  2. ^ Motavalli, John (2002). Bamboozled at the Revolution. New York, NY, USA: Viking. pp. 63–69, 216. ISBN 0670899801.
  3. ^ Vengattil, Munsif (26 February 2018). "U.S. cloud networking firm GTT to buy Europe's Interoute for $2.3 billion". Reuters.
  4. ^ "John Kinsella". www.childrenscolorado.org.
  5. ^ Kinsella, John P.; Cutter, Gary R.; Walsh, William F.; Gerstmann, Dale R.; Bose, Carl L.; Hart, Claudia; Sekar, Kris C.; Auten, Richard L.; Bhutani, Vinod K.; Gerdes, Jeffrey S.; George, Thomas N. (2006-07-27). "Early inhaled nitric oxide therapy in premature newborns with respiratory failure". The New England Journal of Medicine. 355 (4): 354–364. doi:10.1056/NEJMoa060442. ISSN 1533-4406. PMID 16870914.
  6. ^ "Scholarship helps Haverford build bridges". www.haverford.edu. 30 September 2006.
  7. ^ Kinsella, James (1989). Covering the Plague: AIDS and the American Media. Rutgers University Press. ISBN 978-0813514826.
  8. ^ Kinsella, James (January 1, 1998). "Covering the Plague Years: Four Approaches to the AIDS Beat". New England Journal of Public Policy. 4 (1): 465–474.
  9. ^ Stoner, Andrew E. (2019). The journalist of Castro Street: the life of Randy Shilts. Urbana. ISBN 978-0-252-05132-6. OCLC 1090699627.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  10. ^ Kalakota, Ravi (1996). Electronic Commerce: A manager's guide. Boston: Addison Wesley. pp. 269. ISBN 0201880679. james kinsella pathfinder.
  11. ^ "MSNBC gets new general manager". CNET.com. 2 October 1996.
  12. ^ Ross Sorkin, Andrew (11 May 2000). "Chairman for World Online". The New York Times.
  13. ^ Olsen, Stefanie (4 May 2000). "MSNBC CEO leaves to run Dutch ISP". CNET.com.
  14. ^ Clark, Andrew (13 April 2000). "Brink resigns from World Online after irate investors go to law". The Guardian.
  15. ^ "Duchess of York calls on Mandela". The Sun Sentinel. 5 July 1999.
  16. ^ Ross Sorkin, Andrew (8 September 2000). "Italian Dutch deal creates internet giant". The New York Times.
  17. ^ Gradiner, Joey (18 December 2002). "Interoute back from the dead, loss 250 staff". Total Telecom.
  18. ^ "Fixing Games glitches before they happen". inv.gr. April 4, 2003.
  19. ^ [lightreading.com "Interoute hires, plans expansion"]. lightreading. Retrieved November 30, 2004. {{cite news}}: Check |url= value (help)
  20. ^ Larson, Eugenie (15 July 2002). "Interoute acquires ebone". Lightreading.com.
  21. ^ Savas, Antony (5 September 2005). "Interoute to acquire Via Networks". Lightreading.com.
  22. ^ "Big Data Factsheet" (PDF). European Commission.
  23. ^ Scott, Mark (20 October 2015). "As US tech companies scramble, group sees opportunity in safe-harbor decision". The New York Times.
  24. ^ "Cloud networking company GTT to acquire Interoute in 2.3 billion deal". Reuters. 26 February 2018.
  25. ^ "Aithority". aithority.com. November 25, 2020.
  26. ^ "ICC Founders". MIT.
  27. ^ "Content under pressure". Cnet. 23 December 1996.
  28. ^ "The 7th Annual European Data Protection and Privacy Conference". European Union. 1 December 2016.
  29. ^ MSNBC (2015-07-25), EU's Landmark Online Privacy Rules | shift | msnbc, retrieved 2019-05-06
  30. ^ Nystrom, Andy (March 25, 2020). "Making ends meet during the coronavirus pandemic". Kirkland Reporter. Kirkland, Washington.
  31. ^ "Scholarship helps Haverford build bridges with the Islamic world". haverford.edu. September 30, 2006.
  32. ^ "Spectrum Club". Air Force Academy Foundation. Retrieved 2021-03-10.
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