Howard Sachar

Howard Sachar joined IBM in Kingston, NY after receiving his Ph.D. in Mathematics from Lehigh University in 1973. Early in his career, Sachar held a variety of technical positions in hardware, software, and systems development in Kingston and Poughkeepsie. He then joined IBM’s T.J. Watson Research Center, where he invented machine organization technology that significantly impacted IBM’s product line and managed research teams. Following his time at Research, Sachar held technical, managerial, and executive positions in the U.S. and Europe, including serving as the Director for Strategic Outsourcing Innovation in the Americas. In this capacity, Sachar was responsible for integrating innovation and emerging technologies into IBM’s major outsourcing customer relationships across all industries, with a total contract value of more than $12B. Sachar retired in 2010.

In the 50 years that Sachar has been a resident of New Paltz, he has been an active consumer of many benefits SUNY offers to the community. Since his retirement, Sachar has audited a diversity of courses, attended lectures, concerts, and planetarium presentations. Sachar swims regularly in the Elting Pool, is a member of the Sojourner Truth Library and Dorsky Museum and is part of the College-Community Chorale. From 2013 to 2021, he served on the University’s Advisory Board of the Institute for Disaster Mental Health. Most recently, Sachar joined the SUNY New Paltz Foundation’s Finance and Investment Committee as a Committee member.

He is married to Dr. Yael Ravin, and they have a daughter, Cedilla Sachar.