Professor Merino
CES 102
1 April 2012
Grand Challenges Essay My dream job is to be the CEO of a Fortune-500 corporation involved with software or computing. I plan to use both my business skills and my skills as a computer engineer to work my way up the corporate ladder until I reach that ultimate goal. As CEO, several responsibilities I will have to face are the decision-making and leadership aspects of the company. As the leader of the company, I will probably encounter tough decisions such as whether to keep certain employees or how to spend company funds; it will be my job to manage these situations to the best of my ability. The chief executive officer of a corporation reports to the Board of Directors, so no CEO is truly free to do anything without bounds unless he or she is also the owner of the company. The CEO is also the chief communicator of the company so it will be my job to work closely with leaders of other companies and even members of the media with the goal of making my company the greatest company it can be. As a future computer engineer, the grand challenge I would probably be most useful solving would be the challenge of securing cyberspace. To help solve this grand challenge, it would be imperative for me to try to engineer safer, more secure software that could detect possible breaches of security faster or would be impenetrable to begin with. If such software was developed, mass-produced, and sold to the public, problems such as hackers accessing government files and people falling victim to identity theft would rapidly decline. In addition, the challenge of securing cyberspace would be a success.