Alan Ashton (executive)

Alan C. Ashton ( born 1942 in Salt Lake City, Utah) is an American computer scientist and entrepreneur and co-founder of WordPerfect and one of the founders of the associated software company of the same. He was a professor at Brigham Young University.

Ashton studied computer science and music at the University of Utah. In the 1970s he was a professor at Brigham Young University where he was the word processing program WordPerfect developed with his student Bruce Bastian and 1979 for a company (Satellite Software International, later Perfect World Corporation) founded. In 1987 he gave up his professorship at all and was President and CEO of the company. The company was headed by Ashton, Bastian (each held about half of the shares ) and Pete Peterson. Following the acquisition of WordPerfect by Novell in 1994, he belonged until 1996 to the Board of Directors of Novell.

In 1999 he founded the venture capital company ASH Capital. With his wife, he founded Thanksgiving Point in Lehi, a municipal center with school activities, a museum and golf course. He and his wife Karen Ashton, he has eleven children.

He is a Mormon and worked in his youth as a missionary of the Church in Germany. 2004 to 2006 he was president of the Missionary Church in Western Ontario. He is the grandson of former President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints, David O. McKay.

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