Donna Dubinsky, One of Palm's Co-Founders, Is Leaving the Company

Donna Dubinsky, who co-founded Palm, Inc. along with Jeff Hawkins in the 1990s, is leaving Palm's Board of Directors.

Palm says "Ms. Dubinsky's offer to resign as a director was not the result of any disagreement with the Company." Instead, it is a side effect of Elevation Partners taking an additional stake in Palm.

Wheeling and Dealing

Elevation Partners, the private-equity firm that owns 25% of Palm, invested an addition $100 million in the company late last year. This is intended to keep Palm solvent until its next generation of smartphones can get on the market in the coming months.

As part of this deal, Elevation Partners gained the ability to name another person to Palm's Board of Directors. For that to happen, though, someone on the Board needed to leave. Dubinsky volunteered be that person.

The man selected to replace her is Rajiv Dutta, who retired as the President of eBay Marketplaces and Executive Vice President of eBay Inc. in October of last year. He is also a former member of eBay's board of directors.

A Changing of the Guard

Jeff Hawkins and Donna Dubinsky founded Palm 1992 as an independent company, but during the struggles to launch the first Palm Pilot had to sell the company to U.S. Robotics, which itself was later acquired by 3Com.

Hawkins and Dubinsky chafed under the management of these larger companies and eventually quit the company in 1998 to found Handspring. Dubinsky was CEO while Hawkins was in charge of product development. They were in the slightly odd situation of licensing the Palm OS, an operating system they had created.

Years passed, Palm's and Handspring's fortunes rose and fell, until 2003, when Palm bought out Handspring to acquire its expertise in making smartphones and the very first Treo.

Since that time, Dubinsky has been on Palm's Board of Directors, but has taken no other role in the company.

These days, Palm is primarily run by people selected by Elevation Partners, most notably Jon Rubinstein, the company's Chairman.

Via Palm