Gregg Zehr

Gregg Zehr

Gregg grew up on a farm, attending both grade school and high school in Fisher. After high school, Gregg went to Goshen College for two years then transferred to the University of Illinois where he graduated with both bachelors and masters degrees in Electrical Engineering.

Today, Gregg is founder and president of Lab126, where he leads the engineering and design team that invented the Amazon Kindle electronic reader. Zehr started the company in 2004 and launched the first Kindle in 2007. The design teams there have continued to introduce new versions of Kindle, including the Kindle Fire in 2011.

Prior to Lab126, Zehr held vice president roles at various Silicon Valley technology companies including Apple, VA Linux and Palm. In his nine years at Apple, Gregg developed several generations of Macintosh computers. For the last two years at Apple, Zehr was vice-president of the PowerBook hardware design team. Gregg left Apple to join VA Linux, a startup where he established the hardware design team that developed Linux-based servers optimized for internet websites. VA Linux had a successful IPO in 1999. Gregg lives in Palo Alto, California.

  • 1975 Bachelors of Science Electrical Engineering – University of Illinois
  • 1977 Masters of Science Electrical Engineering – University of Illinois
  • 1978 Computer Design at Magnavox in Fort Wayne, Indiana
  • 1988 Apple Computer – VP of Engineering for Macintosh
  • 1997 VA Linux Startup
  • 2002 Palm – VP of Hardware Engineering
  • 2004 Lab126 – Amazon Kindle-Engineering and Design Team Leader