Be careful how you treat people. You likely will run into them again.

Paul Sagan is reminded of that often.

The chief executive of Akamai Technologies, (AKAM) a company that makes up part of the backbone of the Internet, often finds himself doing business with former colleagues or bosses.

For instance, there's a deal he's working on now — no, he said he can't give details.

"I realize that the people I'm negotiating with I worked with 15 years ago in a different life," Sagan told IBD. "It's important not to mistreat people, and not to burn bridges as you go, because inevitably you will be crossing the bridge the other way at some point."

Sagan, 48, has moved seamlessly over the media world's bridges. He started as a TV journalist. He rose to a manager spot, then to his current level: technology guru who constantly reinvents how information is delivered. Along the way, he's become a trusted adviser and a supporter of education.

"They say about CEOs and leaders that they should think outside the box," said John Lavine, dean of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. "I think he's one of those people who doesn't know there is a box."

Sagan, who earned a journalism degree from Medill in 1981, co-chairs an advisory board that helps the school figure out how to prepare tomorrow's journalists.

"Who's had more experience thinking that through than Paul Sagan? I can't think of anybody," Lavine said.

The Write Stuff

Sagan's TV career started at New York's WCBS, where he wrote news items. In 1987, the 28-year-old became CBS' youngest station news director. Suddenly he was supervising veteran employees.

They knew he was a hard worker. "On the other hand, people remembered me when I was hired as a gofer and I used to get them coffee," he said. He had to earn their respect.

Peter Landis, then a writer at the station, told the New York Times in an interview years later that Sagan stood out as the only desk assistant to wear a coat and tie.

"Initially some people thought — myself included — that here was this somewhat snotty kid who was coming into the newsroom and thought he was going to take over," said Landis, now managing editor of New York's NY1 News channel. "Of course, a few years later he took over."

Sagan could have stayed at WCBS. He was young and moving up. But he saw another opportunity: technology. As he says, he's never been afraid to walk away from a good job if he saw something better.

So he joined media giant Time Warner (TMX) in 1991 and aimed at creating that regional cable news channel, NY1. It took off.

By 1995, Sagan was president and editor of New Media at Time Warner's magazine publishing division. He followed that with a stint in Geneva advising the World Economic Forum in 1997 and 1998.

Then it was on to Cambridge, Mass., to join the Internet revolution. He became chief operating officer of Akamai in October 1998, the year before it went public.

Akamai pioneered distributing data online, which is the norm today. But early skeptics doubted that Akamai or other firms could manage the massive task of synchronizing data on far-flung servers.

"When we first started, people told us it would be impossible to do what we were going to do," Sagan said.

He and Akamai did it anyway.

"Then when the dot-com bubble burst (in 2000), people said, 'Great, but you're going to be toast like everyone else,' " Sagan said.

They weren't.

Though Akamai lost money in its lean early years, it survived and turned its first annual profit in 2004.

The next year Sagan took over as CEO, and by fiscal 2006 Akamai saw revenue surge 51% from the year before to $429 million. Akamai's stock also reacted positively to his assumption of the top spot in April 2005 — rocketing from around 12 to near 50, a 300% bolt.

Still, not every Sagan saga was bright.

While at Time Warner he created Pathfinder, one of the first Web portals that tried to aggregate search functions and e-mail. The concept would eventually take hold. But Pathfinder was out of the game by then. It hemorrhaged cash before Time Warner folded it in 1999.

Then there was the massacre of Sept. 11, 2001. That morning shook Akamai and Sagan, then its president.

The company's co-founder and chief technology officer, Daniel Lewin, was aboard American Airlines Flight 11 when it slammed into the North Tower.

Lewin, 31, was a father and the brilliant mind who developed the algorithms that let Akamai speed the flow of data on the Web.

The loss was painful. Even so, Lewin left a spark. His systems let news Web sites handle spikes of millions of users looking for information in those dark hours.

Sagan says the tragedy infused him and the rest of the company with a new commitment to succeed.

"For his memory and for everything he stood for, we wanted to prove all the doubters wrong," he said.

Sagan credits his own hard work. He also knows that smart people around him were crucial.

He says he feels a responsibility to give back to the community. That's where his work with the Match charter school in Boston comes in.

A senior at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, Michael Goldstein, designed the charter school to help mostly poor students graduate from high school and succeed in college.

Goldstein cold-e-mailed 100 high-tech executives in the Boston area. Sagan was one of the few who responded.

He and his wife, Ann, were hooked from the start. The way he sees it, quality education is a civil right — and bad schools perpetuate a cycle of poverty.

"Without basic math, writing and reasoning skills, the odds (of rising) are a billion to one," he said. "You might as well just go buy a lottery ticket, is my guess in terms of your odds of getting out of poverty."

Goldstein says the couple made a large donation to help open the school — reportedly six figures, though neither Sagan nor Goldstein would say how much.

Match Spark

Sagan served as an adviser to the school, helping it navigate the difficult startup. He helped design the mechanisms by which Match could borrow money, and calmed bank worries by guaranteeing some of the debt.

"They wouldn't look at deals like ours until the Sagans came along," Goldstein said of lenders.

Ann Sagan, who has master's degrees in business administration and education, serves as Match's academic dean. She draws no salary, the school says.

Match took in its first students in 2000. In one more year, its oldest students will be graduating from college and looking for jobs.

"The kids that we can't wait for are, No. 1, our first alum that takes a teaching job at the school," Goldstein said. "And for Paul, it's probably the first alum who gets a job at Akamai. With either one, that's how we'll know we made it."

BY KEVIN HARLIN