Safra Catz

Safra Catz was born in December 1961 in Holon, Israel, and moved with her family to Brookline, Massachusetts, at age six. She went through Brookline High School, then Wharton, where she earned a bachelor's degree in 1983, and stayed at the University of Pennsylvania for a law degree in 1986. Rather than practice law, she went into investment banking at Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, working her way up over thirteen years from an entry-level analyst to senior vice president in 1994 and managing director in 1997. It was banking, not technology, that trained her: by the time she left Wall Street in 1999, she had spent more than a decade structuring deals for other people's companies before running one of her own.

Catz joined Oracle in April 1999 as a senior vice president and was on the board within two years. She became president in 2004, moved in and out of the chief financial officer role through the 2000s before holding it permanently from 2011, and was named co-president alongside Mark Hurd in 2010. She was Oracle's chief dealmaker as much as its accountant, driving the 10.3 billion dollar acquisition of PeopleSoft in 2005 and the 9.4 billion dollar purchase of NetSuite in 2016. When Larry Ellison stepped down as chief executive in September 2014, Catz became co-CEO alongside Hurd — after Hurd went on medical leave in September 2019 and died the following month, Catz became Oracle's sole chief executive, before moving to executive vice chair in September 2025 as Oracle installed co-CEOs Clay Magouyrk and Mike Sicilia.

Catz has been one of the highest-paid executives in America for over a decade, topping Fortune's list of best-paid women in 2011 at 51.7 million dollars and taking in roughly 138 million dollars in 2022, sixth highest of any American CEO, at a company whose average employee earns a fraction of that. The 2016 NetSuite deal she helped negotiate became the basis of a shareholder lawsuit alleging Oracle overpaid to bail out a company its founder and chairman, Larry Ellison, held a large personal stake in, litigation that ran until 2025 — she has denied any breach of duty. In March 2021 she drew separate scrutiny for converting derivative units into 2.25 million Oracle shares and selling them at roughly double the price she paid, a transaction fully disclosed and legal but conspicuous all the same.

Catz moved to executive vice chair in September 2025, handing day-to-day control to co-CEOs Clay Magouyrk and Mike Sicilia while Ellison, still chairman and Oracle's largest shareholder, remains the company's dominant figure. She joined the board of Paramount Skydance that same August and, by Forbes' count that year, had a net worth above 3 billion dollars. Whether the record credits her with the operational discipline that let Oracle absorb PeopleSoft, Sun, and NetSuite without losing its footing, or reads her 25-plus years there as proof that Oracle answers to one founder and everyone else works for him, is not something the company's own governance history has resolved.

Safra Catz's life against the full span of the corpus — the fading end marks a life still in progress.

• PeopleSoft acquisition other
  10.3 billion dollars — Oracle's largest deal to date, which Catz helped negotiate 2005
• Sun Microsystems acquisition other
  7.4 billion dollars, brought Oracle into computer hardware 2010
• NetSuite acquisition other
  9.4 billion dollars — later challenged in a shareholder suit over Ellison's NetSuite stake 2016
• Cerner acquisition other
  28.3 billion dollars, Oracle's largest deal, moved the company into electronic health records 2022

• December 1961 aged 0 Born in Holon, Israel
• 1967 aged ~6 Family moves to Brookline, Massachusetts
• 1983 aged ~22 Graduates the Wharton School
• April 1999 aged 37 Joins Oracle as senior vice president
• 2005 aged ~44 Helps drive Oracle's 10.3 billion dollar acquisition of PeopleSoft
• September 2014 aged 52 Becomes Oracle co-CEO alongside Mark Hurd
• September 2019 aged 57 Becomes Oracle's sole CEO after Hurd's death
• 2022 aged ~61 Oracle completes its 28.3 billion dollar acquisition of Cerner
• September 2025 aged 63 Steps down as CEO to become executive vice chair

• Larry Ellison b. 1944
  Co-founder of Oracle Corporation, a pioneer in database software and enterprise computing. served under, then succeeded as CEO
• Donald Trump b. 1946
  Businessman, media personality, and 45th and 47th president whose populist movement transformed American politics. joined the transition team of
• Michael Dell b. 1965
  Founder of Dell Technologies who built one of the world's largest PC and IT infrastructure companies. fellow enterprise technology CEO
• Satya Nadella b. 1967
  CEO of Microsoft who pivoted the company toward cloud computing and AI, driving massive growth. rival enterprise cloud CEO