J. Clifford Hudson (born 1954, Dallas) is an American business executive best known for serving as chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Oklahoma City-based Sonic Corp. He also serves as a trustee of the Ford Foundation and was a past chairman of the board of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
Personal life:
Hudson is a graduate of the University of Oklahoma and Georgetown University Law Center. He is married to Dr. Leslie Hudson, a public health professional and former associate professor at the University of Oklahoma, with whom he has two sons. In his spare time, he has been a member of the Sonic Tones, an eight-member band made up of senior executives of the Sonic Corporation, which competed in the 2003 Battle of the Corporate Bands at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, Ohio.
Career:
After graduating from law school, Hudson practiced law. After several years as a practicing attorney he was hired as the head of the legal department for Sonic Corp in 1984. He became president and chief executive officer in 1995, and was named chairman in January 2000. During his tenure, the company has grown from a nationwide total of 1,428 locations in 1995 to more than 3,500 today, with locations in 43 of the 50 US states. In addition, average drive-in sales have increased by 65% and system-wide sales from $880 million to $3.5 billion. The company's enterprise value has grown from approximately $200 million to more than $1.0 billion.
Philanthropy:
Hudson is a member of the board of trustees of the Ford Foundation and is a past chairman of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. He is also chairman of Georgetown University Law Center's Board of Visitors and has served as chairman of the Oklahoma City Public School Board of Education. In 1994, he was appointed by President Bill Clinton to serve as chairman of the Board of the Securities Investor Protection Corporation, and served until 2001. In addition to this he has served on numerous boards related to Oklahoma City including MAPS for Kids—a $700 million school revitalization program. From 1999 through 2008, Hudson was engaged in a rebuilding plan and turnaround effort of the Oklahoma City Public Schools in which he co-chaired the MAPS for Kids campaign. Hudson has also presented the city’s schools substantial monetary contributions of his own, including $500,000 toward a rehabilitation of the auditorium at Northwest Classen High School, his alma mater.
Awards and Honors:
Hudson received the 2004 Silver Plate - Foodservice Operator of the Year Award from International Foodservice Manufacturers Association, and the 2000 Multi-Unit Foodservice Operators (MUFSO) Golden Chain Award from Nation's Restaurant News. He has been a guest on various national business programs including CNBC's Mad Money, Squawkbox and Power Lunch, as well as various Bloomberg news programs. In 2009, he was placed on the Foundation for Oklahoma City Public Schools Hall of Fame for his longstanding service. In 2001 Hudson received the University’s Regents Award from the University of Oklahoma and, in 2011, the University of Oklahoma conferred to him an honorary doctorate degree in humane letters as a “civic leader and supporter of education”.
Jack Dorsey (born November 19, 1976) is an American computer programmer and entrepreneur widely known as a co-founder and CEO of Twitter, and as the founder and CEO of Square, a mobile payments company. In 2008, he was named to the MIT Technology Review TR35 as one of the top 35 innovators in the world under the age of 35. For 2012, The Wall Street Journal gave him the "Innovator of the Year Award" for technology.
Early life:
Dorsey was born and raised in St. Louis, the son of Marcia (Smith) and Tim Dorsey. He is of part Italian descent. His father worked for a company that developed mass spectrometers and his mother was a homemaker. He was raised Catholic, and his uncle is a Catholic priest in Cincinnati. He went to Catholic high school, at Bishop DuBourg High School.
By age fourteen, Dorsey had become interested in dispatch routing. Some of the open source software he created in the area of dispatch logistics is still used by many taxi cab companies. Dorsey attended the Missouri University of Science and Technology before subsequently transferring to New York University, but he dropped out. He first came up with the idea that became Twitter at New York University. While working on dispatching as a programmer, he later moved to California.
In Oakland in 2000, Dorsey started his company to dispatch couriers, taxis, and emergency services from the Web. His other projects and ideas at this time included networks of medical devices and a "frictionless service market". In July 2000, building on dispatching and inspired in part by LiveJournal and possibly by AOL Instant Messenger, he had the idea for a Web-based realtime status/short message communication service.
When he first saw implementations of instant messaging, Dorsey wondered whether the software's user status output could be shared among friends easily. He approached Odeo, which at the time happened to be interested in text messaging. Dorsey and Biz Stone decided that SMS text suited the status message idea, and built a prototype of Twitter in about two weeks. The idea attracted many users at Odeo and investment from Evan Williams who had left Google after selling Pyra Labs and Blogger.
Twitter:
Williams, Stone and Noah Glass co-founded Obvious Corporation, which then spun off Twitter Inc. with Dorsey as the CEO. As chief executive officer, Dorsey saw the startup through two rounds of funding by the venture capitalists who backed the company. He reportedly lost his position for leaving work early to enjoy other pursuits such as yoga and fashion design.
As the service began to grow in popularity, Dorsey chose the improvement of uptime as top priority, even over creating revenue – which, as of 2008, Twitter was not designed to earn. Dorsey described the commercial use of Twitter and its API as two things that could lead to paid features. He describes his three guiding principles, which he says are shared by the company, as simplicity, constraint and craftsmanship.
On October 16, 2008, Williams took over the role of CEO, while Dorsey became chairman of the board. On March 28, 2011, Dorsey returned to Twitter as Executive Chairman after Dick Costolo replaced Williams as the CEO. On June 10, 2015, Costolo announced that he was resigning as CEO of Twitter effective July 1, 2015. Dorsey would assume the post of Interim CEO upon Costolo's departure. He was named permanent CEO of Twitter on October 5, 2015. On the day after the controversy about Twitter's new algorithms for tweets, Dorsey responded to the trend saying it was only a hoax.
In May 2016, Dorsey announced that Twitter would not count photos and links in the 140-character limit to free up more space for text. This move was an attempt to entice new users since the number of tweets per day was at an all-time low of about 300 million in January 2016 compared to about 500 million in September 2013 and its peak of 661 million in August 2014.
Dorsey developed a small business platform to accept debit and credit card payments on a mobile device called Square, released in May 2010. The small, square-shaped device attaches to iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, or Android devices via the headphone jack, and as a mini card reader allows a person to swipe their card, choose an amount to transfer to the recipient and then sign their name for confirmation. Square is also a system for sending paperless receipts via text message or email, and is available as a free app for iOS and Android OS. The company grew from 10 employees in December 2009 to over a hundred employees by June 2011. Square's office is located on Market Street in San Francisco. In September 2012, Business Insider magazine valued Square Inc. at $3.2 billion. Dorsey is CEO of Square, Inc. On October 14, 2015, Square filed for an IPO to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
He is the founder of Enterprise Rent-a-Car Company. He used to be a fighter jet pilot in World War II. He is now involved in philanthropic work, making donations to institutions like the Missouri Botanical Garden and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra.
She inherited her wealth from her father, who co-founded the candy company called Mars, Inc. with her grandfather. She does not own any official position in the company, however. She is a graduate of Bryn Mawr College where she finished with a degree in Anthropology.
James E. "Jim" Thompson, GBS (born January 14, 1940) is the founder, chairman and chief executive of The Crown Worldwide Group.
Early life and education:
Thompson was born in Jersey City, New Jersey and raised in Bayonne. His father was in the United States Navy and Thompson visited and lived in many places during his childhood, including Guam. He eventually made his way to California and attended San Jose State University. While studying at San Jose State University, Thompson was a brother of Alpha Tau Omega (Epsilon Chi Chapter). After graduating with a Bachelor of Science degree in aeronautical engineering, Thompson formed what is now known as The Crown Worldwide Group.
Career:
Thompson established Crown's first operation in 1965. Thompson was living in Japan at the time and recognized the need for an international moving service. With only US$1,000 in his bank account, he established Transport Services International in Yokohama. In 1970, the company expanded into Hong Kong and thereafter into other Asia Pacific locations. In 1975, Transport Services International became Crown Pacific, and by the early 1980s was established as the leading moving company in Asia. In later years, offices were established across America, Australasia and Europe, and the company was renamed Crown Worldwide Group.
Thompson was awarded the Gold Bauhinia Star, which is presented to eminent persons in Hong Kong who have given distinguished service to the community or who have rendered public or voluntary service of a very high degree of merit.
Organizations and charity work:
Lt. Gen Ma Chhoeun, adviser to the Cambodian prime minister, Hun Sen; Thompson and his sister, Hazel Joyce, honoring their mother Sadie
Following the opening of Crown’s facility in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Thompson and his wife Sally traveled to the region, where it was brought to their attention that the village of Proa Chum needed a school. Thompson contacted the Cambodian government and agreed to provide the funds for a school, requesting that it be named in his mother's honor. Early in 2008, Thompson announced the official opening of the Hun Sen Proa Chum Primary School in Phnom Penh.
Proa Chum Primary School:
Thompson is a member of the International Advisory Board of the San Jose State University Business School and serves as the chairman of HKTDC (Hong Kong Trade Development Council) Logistics Services Advisory Committee (where he also served as a council member from 2002 to 2004). He also served as a board member of Ocean Park Corporation for six years, a nature-themed amusement park with a mission to assist in the understanding and practice of wildlife conservation. Although Thompson retired from this post in June 2009, Crown continues to support Ocean Park through a variety of charitable activities and services.
Thompson is also a non-executive director of the board of The Wharf (Holdings), a member of the Investment Promotion Ambassador Scheme, as well as the Hong Kong Trade and Industry Advisory Board (TIAB) and the ICAC (Independent Commission Against Corruption) Advisory Committee on Corruption. He also served two terms as chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce, Hong Kong from 2002–2003.
Additionally, Thompson serves as a member of the Hong Kong Forum and Vision 2047 which are organizations that actively discuss Hong Kong issues with visiting politicians, journalists and academics. He is also a member of the board of the Hong Kong-America Centre and has been a delegate representing Hong Kong on numerous Hong Kong Trade Development Council trade missions around the world.
Thompson is a member of the Executive Committee of the Society for the Promotion of Hospice Care, is an advisory board member of The Salvation Army and a trustee of Outward Bound Hong Kong. He currently chairs the annual Hike for Hospice charity event.
Thompson and his wife, Sally, are also very active in the Changing Young Lives Foundation and have chaired and organized several fund raising events. Formerly known as Save the Children Hong Kong, Changing Young Lives is a long-established charity organization based in Hong Kong, with a focus on helping children.
James Howard Goodnight (born January 6, 1943) is an American businessman and software programmer. He and several other faculty members of North Carolina State University left the university in 1976 to co-found SAS Institute. Since the first day of incorporation (July 1, 1976) he has served as the company's CEO. His leadership style and the work environment he created at SAS, now a multibillion-dollar company, have been studied by other businesses and by academics.
Early life and career:
Goodnight was born to Albert Goodnight and Dorothy Patterson in Salisbury, NC, on January 6, 1943. He lived in Greensboro, NC, until he was 12, when his family moved to Wilmington. In his youth, he often worked at his father's hardware store. Mathematics and chemistry were Goodnight's strongest subjects in school, thanks in part, he says, to a "wonderful chemistry teacher" at New Hanover High School.
Goodnight's career with computers began when he took a computer course his sophomore year at North Carolina State University. At the time, he said, “a light went on, and I fell in love with making machines do things for other people.” The following summer he got a job writing software programs for the agricultural economics department. With contributions from other alumni, Goodnight was responsible for the construction of a new fraternity house in 2002.
Goodnight received a Master's in statistics in 1968. While working on his Master's, his curiosity was piqued over the prospect of a man being sent to the moon. His programming skills helped him land a position at a company building electronic equipment for the ground stations that communicated with the Apollo space capsules. While working on the Apollo program, Goodnight experienced a work environment that had an annual turnover rate of approximately 50 percent. This shaped his views on corporate culture and his future role as an employer. Goodnight returned to North Carolina State University after working on the Apollo project. He earned a PhD in statistics with thesis titled Quadratic unbiased estimation of variance components in linear models with an emphasis on the one-way classification under the supervision of Robert James Monroe and became a faculty member from 1972 to 1976.
Career:
Goodnight joined another faculty at North Carolina State in a research project to create a general purpose statistical analysis system (SAS) for analyzing agricultural data. The project was operated by a consortium of eight land-grant universities and funded primarily by the USDA. Goodnight along with another faculty member Anthony James Barr became project leaders for the development of the early version of SAS. When the software had 100 customers in 1976, Goodnight and three others from the University left the college to form SAS Institute in an office across the street.
Goodnight remained CEO of SAS Institute for more than 35 years as the company grew from $138,000 its first year in business, to $420 million in 1993 and $2.43 billion by 2010. Under his leadership, the company grew each year. Goodnight became known for creating and defending SAS’ corporate culture, often described by the media as "utopian." He rejected acquisition offers and chose against going public to protect the company's work environment. Goodnight has maintained a flat organizational structure with about 27 people who report directly to him and three organizational layers.
Goodnight at the World Economic Forum in Cologny, Geneva.
HSM Global described Goodnight's leadership style in a framework of three pillars: "help employees do their best work by keeping them intellectually challenged and by removing distractions; Make managers responsible for sparking creativity; eliminate arbitrary distinctions between 'suits' and 'creatives'; Engage customers as creative partners to help deliver superior products."
In 2004, Goodnight was named a Great American Business Leader by Harvard; that same year he was named one of America's 25 Most Fascinating Entrepreneurs by Inc. Magazine. He has also been a frequent speaker and participant at the World Economic Forum.
Personal:
Goodnight met his wife, Ann, while he was a senior at North Carolina State University and she was attending Meredith College. They have three children. Goodnight was America's 61st richest individual, with a net worth of approximately $7.3 billion, as of 2014.
Goodnight has an interest in improving the state of education, particularly elementary and secondary education. In 1996, Goodnight and his wife, along with his business partner, John Sall and his wife Ginger, founded an independent prep school Cary Academy. Both of the Goodnights are also involved in the local Cary, NC, community. He owns Prestonwood Country Club and The Umstead Hotel and Spa situated on the edge of the SAS campus. His wife also opened An Cuisines, an Asian fusion restaurant in Cary, NC.
James P. Gorman is Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Morgan Stanley. He was formerly Co-President and Co-Head of Strategic Planning at the firm.
Business career:
James P. Gorman joined Morgan Stanley in February 2006 as the President and Chief Operating Officer of the Global Wealth Management Group (GWMG). In October 2007, Gorman took on the additional role of Co-Head of Strategic Planning with Chief Financial Officer Colm Kelleher. In December 2007, he was named Co-President of Morgan Stanley, along with Walid Chammah, with the day-to-day responsibility for Wealth Management and Asset Management. In September 2009, it was announced he would become CEO of Morgan Stanley in January 2010. He also assumed the title of Chairman in January 2012 following the retirement of John J. Mack. Press reports indicate his compensation as Chairman and CEO was $9.75 million for 2012, with the New York Times reporting an increase to $18 million in 2013.
In 2009, he helped create the largest wealth management platform globally when he led the merger and integration of Morgan Stanley’s wealth management business with Citi’s Smith Barney business. Structured as a staggered acquisition, Morgan Stanley purchased the remainder of the joint venture in June 2013, and is a global leader in wealth management with over 16,000 financial advisors and $1.8 trillion in client assets.
Prior to joining Morgan Stanley in February 2006, Gorman held a succession of executive positions at Merrill Lynch, including leading from 2001 to 2005 the company’s U.S. and, subsequently, global private client businesses. He joined Merrill Lynch in 1999 as Chief Marketing Officer, and also served as head of Strategy and Research. Before joining Merrill Lynch, Gorman served as a senior partner of McKinsey & Company, where he was a member of the financial services practice, and as an attorney in Melbourne.
In 2014 he was included in the 50 Most Influential ranking of Bloomberg Markets Magazine.
Personal life:
A native of Australia, Gorman attended Xavier College, and earned his Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Laws from the University of Melbourne, where he was a residential member and president of Newman College. In 1982 he joined law firm Phillips Fox and Masel (now DLA Phillips Fox) before heading to the United States to obtain a Master of Business Administration from Columbia Business School. While at Columbia he was a resident at International House of New York.
Among his civic activities, Gorman serves on the Federal Advisory Council to the U.S. Federal Reserve Board, the Board of Overseers of the Columbia Business School, the Monetary Authority of Singapore International Advisory Panel, the Financial Services Forum, the Boards of the Partnership for New York City, and the Institute of International Finance. He formerly co-chaired the Business Committee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and served on the board and as Chairman (2006) of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association in Washington, D.C..
Gorman lives on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, with his wife of over 20 years, Penny, and their two children. His daughter Caroline Gorman is in the band Madness and the Film.
He is the founder of Renaissance Technologies, a hedge fund company. He is a trustee of the Brookhaven National Laboratory, the Institute for Advanced Study at Rockefeller University and the Mathematical Research Institute at Berkeley. He is also a board member at the MIT.
James "Jamie" Dimon ( born March 13, 1956) is an American business executive. He is chairman, president and chief executive officer of JPMorgan Chase, largest of the Big Four American banks, and previously served on the Board of Directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Dimon was named to Time magazine's 2006, 2008, 2009, and 2011 lists of the world's 100 most influential people. He was also named to Institutional Investor's Best CEOs list in the All-America Executive Team Survey from 2008 through 2011.
He received a $23 million pay package for fiscal year 2011, more than any other bank CEO in the United States. Dimon received $20 million in compensation for his work in fiscal year 2013.
In the case of the 2012 JPMorgan Chase trading loss, according to a US Senate report published in March 2013 after 9 months of investigation, Dimon misled investors and regulators in April as losses rose dangerously to $6.2 billion on a “monstrous” derivatives bet made by the so-called "London Whale" Bruno Iksil.
Career:
In a power struggle, Weill left American Express in 1985 and Dimon followed him. The two then took over Commercial Credit, a consumer finance company, from Control Data. Dimon served as the chief financial officer, helping to turn the company around. Through a series of unprecedented mergers and acquisitions, in 1998 Dimon and Weill were able to form the largest financial services conglomerate the world had ever seen, Citigroup. Dimon left Citigroup in November 1998, after being asked to resign by Weill during a weekend executive retreat.It was rumored at the time that he and Weill argued in 1997 over Dimon's not promoting Weill's daughter, Jessica M. Bibliowicz, although that happened over a year before Dimon's departure. At least one other account cites a request by Dimon to be treated as an equal as the real reason. In his 2005 University of Chicago Graduate School of Business Fireside Chat and 2006 Kellogg School of Management interviews, Dimon confirmed that Weill fired him.
In March 2000, Dimon became CEO of Bank One, the nation's fifth largest bank.When JPMorgan Chase purchased Bank One in July 2004, Dimon became president and chief operating officer of the combined company.
On December 31, 2005, he was named chief executive officer of JPMorgan Chase and on December 31, 2006, he was named chairman of the board.
In March 2008 he was a Class A board member of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Under Dimon's leadership, with the acquisitions during his tenure, JPMorgan Chase has become the leading U.S. bank in domestic assets under management, market capitalization value, and publicly traded stock value. JPMorgan Chase is also the No. 1 credit card provider in the U.S.
In 2009, Dimon was considered one of "The TopGun CEOs" by Brendan Wood International, an advisory agency.
On September 26, 2011, Dimon was involved in a high-profile heated exchange with Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of Canada, in which Dimon said provisions of the Basel III international financial regulations discriminate against U.S. banks and are "anti-American".
On May 10, 2012, JPMorgan Chase initiated an emergency conference call to report a loss of at least $2 billion in trades that Dimon said were "designed to hedge the bank's overall credit risks". The strategy was, in Dimon's words, "flawed, complex, poorly reviewed, poorly executed, and poorly monitored".The episode is being investigated by the Federal Reserve, the SEC, and the FBI.
Dimon commented on the Volcker Rule in January 2012, "Part of the Volcker Rule I agreed with, which is no prop trading. But market making is an essential function. And the public should recognize that we have the widest, the deepest, the most transparent capital markets in the world. And part of that is because we have enormous market making. If the rules were written as they originally came out; I suspect they'll be changed, it would really make it hard to be a market maker in the United States.”
He served as Chairman of the Executive Committee of The Business Council for 2011 and 2012.
In October 2013, it was reported that Dimon had given up his role as chairman of JP Morgan's main banking business to be succeeded by former Johnson & Johnson chief executive William Weldon. Dimon retained his roles as chairman and CEO of the parent company.
On January 24, 2014 it was announced that Dimon would receive $20 million for his work in 2013, a year of record profits and stock price under Dimon's reign, despite significant losses that year due to scandals and payments of fines. The award was a 74% raise, which included over $18 million in restricted stock. Forbes reported that, in a statement following news of Dimon’s compensation, the bank said, “Under Mr. Dimon’s stewardship, the Company has fortified its control infrastructure and processes and strengthened each of its key businesses while continuing to focus on strengthening the Company’s leadership capabilities across all levels.
Jan Ake Jonsson (born September 18, 1951) was the managing director of Saab Automobile AB from April 1, 2005, to March 25, 2011. He currently sits as Chairman of the Board for Polstiernan Industri AB.
Education:
Born in Valdemarsvik, Sweden, Jonsson received a bachelor's degree in Business Administration from Uppsala University and first joined Saab-Scania's Automobile Division in Nyköping in 1973.
Career:
He held a variety of positions in Systems Development until becoming a Director for Aftersales & Services of Saab in Trollhättan in 1990. Jonsson held a variety of senior managerial position with Saab, including two years as Vice President for Sales and Marketing for Saab USA, in Atlanta, GA (1991-1993), until he replaced Peter Augustsson at the helm of Saab Automobile in 2005. In 2010 he Received the Swedish Business Award for Outstanding Achievements of the first magnitude from the West Swedish Chamber of Commerce and Industry for decisive action for the western Swedish industry, regarding the way he led Saab Automobile through a restructuring process and protracted sale negotiations that continued for over a year.
Tax crimes allegation:
The Swedish Tax Agency (Skatteverket) handed in a report to the police in May 2012 about their suspicions that Jonsson and two others had committed serious tax crimes. He was released later on Tuesday, but the criminal suspicions against him remain. He denies committing any crimes.