Welch, Jack (b. 1935)

Chief executive officer of General Electric Company

Jack Welch was the seventh CEO of General Electric Company (GE) and, in terms of shareholder wealth created (over $300 billion), its greatest. Welch was born in Peabody, Massachusetts, the only child of a railroad conductor who did not finish high school and a very religious mother with a strong sense of justice. According to Welch, his mother was the most important influence in his life. She saw reality in clear terms and communicated honestly. She had unlimited confidence in her son, but she was quick to punish him if he misbehaved. Welch was selfconscious about a speech impediment (stuttering), but she persuaded him that the reason he stuttered was that his brain worked too fast—thereby turning an apparent handicap into a sign of talent.

Welch was an enthusiastic participant in competitive sports, especially baseball, basketball, and hockey, for which he was team captain in high school. During high school, he worked at several part-time jobs, including caddying and delivering newspapers. A high school literary magazine reported his desire “to make a million.” He was a good student, especially in mathematics and chemistry, and his mother urged him to go to college. Failing to get an ROTC scholarship that could have sent him to MIT, he entered the University of Massachusetts, where he majored in chemical engineering. Despite being active in a sports-oriented fraternity, he achieved high grades every year and graduated in 1957 near the top of his class. He went on to receive a master's degree in chemical engineering in 1958 and a doctorate in 1960, both from the University of Illinois. The most important thing he learned from his doctoral research was tenacity; he learned not to give up when his experiments did not go as planned. Welch married in 1959, had four [Page 1633]children, and was divorced in 1987. He remarried in 1989; in 2002, his second wife filed for divorce amid press reports linking him with the editor of a prestigious business magazine.