Alan N. Trefler (born March 10, 1956) is an American billionaire businessman and chess master[1] best known as the chief executive officer (CEO) of Pegasystems,[2] a multinational software company he founded in 1983.[3] Prior to Pegasystems, in 1975 Trefler tied for first place in the World Open Chess Championship with grandmaster Pal Benko,[1] afterwards working as a software engineer for Casher Associates and TMI Systems.[3] Founding Pegasystems at the age of 27,[4] he took the company Public in 1996,[5] with Trefler remaining clerk and president until 1999[3] and afterwards becoming CEO.[2] With a 52 percent ownership stake in Pegasystems, his net worth surpassed $1 billion in 2013[6] and in March 2017 he appeared on the ForbesBillionaire's List for the first time.[7] In 2014 he authored the book Build for Change, which addresses changing consumer markets.[8] Involved in philanthropy, in 1997 he established the Trefler Foundation.[9]
Early life and education
Alan Trefler was born to a Jewish family in 1956[6] in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of Dorothy (née Pugatch) and Eric Trefler.[10] Trefler was raised in Brookline, Massachusetts[4] with his brother Leon.[6][11] His mother, a daughter of immigrants from Eastern Europe,[10] worked as a schoolteacher.[6] His father, a Holocaust survivor who came to the United States[4] from Poland after World War II,[12] owned and operated Trefler's, a restorer of art and furniture.[13][14] This business is still family owned and operating as of 2021. Working at his family's store while young[4][11] and starting to play chess around the age of seven,[15][12] Trefler would later become high school chess champion of Massachusetts[12] and win various regional competitions.[14] He graduated from Brookline High School[4] in 1973.[16] Trefler went on to Dartmouth College, where he studied economics and computer science[6] and remained active in chess.[17][6] At the age of 19,[11] in 1975 he tied for first place in the World Open Chess Championship[17][6] in New York with grandmaster Pal Benko.[12][1] Also at Dartmouth, he was the winner of the John G. Kemeny prize in computing.[3] He graduated with a BS in 1977.[6]
Business career
Software engineering
Although he attained the level of chess master[11] and considered going professional,[14] after Trefler graduated from Dartmouth he moved into software engineering instead.[11] In the early 1980s he developed computer systems that could play chess,[18] later applying the same business techniques to teaching computers how to process business rules.[11] Between 1978 and 1980[16] Trefler was a senior project manager for Casher Associates Inc., a business process management company in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts.[3] He then worked at TMI Systems, where he led the development of their funds transfer product[3] from 1980 to 1983.[16]
Founder of Pegasystems
He founded Pegasystems in April 1983, taking on the roles of CEO and chairman[3] at the age of 27.[4] Expressing frustration with the "primitive" computer systems available for companies such as banks and insurance companies,[12] he states that "when I started Pega, it was with the vision that we could create a set of metaphors –an intermediate visual language that would enable business people to more directly instruct the machine... [and] get the computer to really understand how business people wanted things to work.... And it turns out to be a fairly hard problem to solve."[18] Basing the company in Cambridge, Massachusetts[4] with Citibank as his first client,[11] during the company's early years Trefler focused on providing case management for companies such as American Express.[18]
The company went public in 1996[5] on NASDAQ.[18] Inventing a number of patents for use in Pegasystems' software architecture,[3] in 1998 Trefler was granted a United States patent for Pegasystems' distinctive rules-based architecture,[11] which provides the framework for Pegasystems' business process management (BPM) solutions.[19] Trefler remained clerk of Pegasystems Inc. until June 1999, and president until October 1999.[3] He remained CEO and chairman of the company's board of directors.[2]
Recent work at Pegasystems
In 2009 Trefler won the Stevie Award for Computer Software CEO of the Year at the American Business Awards.[20][21] In March 2010, Pegasystems acquired Chordiant for around $161.5 million,[22] which gave Pegasystems access to new markets such as telecommunications and healthcare.[23] The Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council named him their Public Company CEO of the Year in 2011.[21] With a 52 percent ownership stake in Pegasystems,[4][6] his net worth surpassed $1 billion on November 25, 2013.[6] His Pegasystems salary was $751,526 in 2014.[24] That year, Business Insider ranked him the eighth lowest paid CEO in the tech industry.[25]
In 2014 he authored and published Build for Change, a book focused on the management of customers and business processes. A Forbes contributor related that the book made "a convincing argument" that companies needed to prepare for changes in customer behavior, or face negative repercussions.[8]
Trefler and his wife donated $1 million to Dorchester High School in Dorchester, Boston in 1995.[28] They established The Trefler Foundation[11] in 1997,[9] which seeks to improve urban public education[15] in the Boston area.[11] The Treflers were early supporters of the nonprofit Year Up,[9] and in 2015 they founded Union & Fifth, where proceeds raised from donated clothes benefit various charities.[29]
Personal life
Trefler married his wife Pamela Reinhard in 1992, who at the time was working as an investment banker. The couple reside in Brookline, Massachusetts.[6]
