Professional Achievement II- Industry

Marco Gardner’s career has been impressive by any measure. But set against the backdrop of a childhood growing up in a small town in Sonora, Mexico, as well as overcoming cancer while pursuing his undergraduate degree at the University of Arizona, his accomplishments at Texas Instruments are nothing short of extraordinary.

Over his 22 years at Texas Instruments, Mr. Gardner has been instrumental in developing novel process technologies and identifying new markets to expand into. Since joining TI in 1998, he has held the positions of: test engineer, design engineer, engineering manager, development manager, and most recently, general manager of the Precision Amplifiers Product Line.

He’s also worked with teams to develop advanced process technologies for optical photodiode sensors and MEMS-based infrared sensors.

In 2011, for example, he relocated to Chengdu for 10 weeks to establish a new design group from the ground up.  In this endeavor, he recruited engineers from the local university and opened a new vast new market for T.I. to build integrated circuits for ambient light, proximity sensing, and thermal measurements in the process.

At his current post as the Product Line Manager for Analog Signal Chain and Linear & Precision Amplifiers, Mr. Gardner has more than doubled the size of his team from 40 engineers to 80 and quadrupled the output of new products.

Even more importantly, the revenue of the product line has grown, on average, by more than 10% per year during his time as GM. And despite doubling the size of the team, he has increased the business’s profit margin by 7% due to his efforts.

The owner of 9 U.S. patents and a Senior Member of the Technical Staff at T.I. since 2013, Mr. Gardner is regarded as expert in digital design methodology. 

He received his Master of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from National Technology University in Fort Collins, Colorado in 2004, and is currently actively involved in the Tucson community where he coordinates outreach efforts that promote STEM education, including robotics competitions, presentations at local schools, and working with the Southern Arizona Research Science and Engineering Foundation.

From 2009 to 2013, Mr. Gardner served on the board of Tucson’s Hispanic Chamber Foundation; a local organization with the goal of giving scholarships to Hispanic High School graduates with economic limitations looking to study engineering.

Married to his college sweetheart, Mr. Gardner is the proud father of two boys and credits his bout with cancer while in college with inspiring a journey of self-discovery and renewed strength and faith that has led to his current success as he learned as he says “ to convert weakness to fuel, a positive attitude to drive, fear into faith and hope into action.”