Biography of Jeff Immelt

Jeffrey Immelt became the ninth Chairman of General Electric in 2001. He began working at General Electric in 1982 and rose through the ranks to become the CEO almost twenty years later.

Jeffrey Immelt was born on February 19, 1956 in Cincinnati, Ohio and grew up in a household already under the watchful eye of General Electric. His father worked for the General Electric Aircraft Engines Division and undoubtedly influenced Immelt's vision for the company. As a boy, Immelt enjoyed sports and exhibited strong leadership skills both in and out of the classroom. He went on to study applied mathematics at Dartmouth College where he became president of his fraternity, Phi Delta Alpha.

During college Immelt worked in the Ford Motor assembly plant over the summers until his graduation in 1978. He worked for Procter & Gamble for a brief period before attending graduate school at Harvard University. Immelt graduated with an MBA from Harvard in 1982 and immediately took a job at General Electric. Although he started working at the corporate office in Fairfield, Connecticut, Jeffrey Immelt was eventually moved to the office in Dallas where he met his future wife, Andrea Allen. They married in 1986.

Jeff Immelt worked his way up from district sales manager to vice president of GE Appliances. When he arrived at the division in 1989, Immelt was faced with the recent recall of millions of refrigerators as a result of failed compressors. His tact and managerial skills earned him the respect of the workers during this difficult time and he was known for giving memorable motivational speeches at the factory from a forklift.

Following his success at the Appliances division, Immelt moved to the GE Plastics division in 1992. Although he failed to meet financial goals, Immelt continued to help GE grow as a company. He moved to the Medical Systems division and was named president and CEO of that division in 1997. GE Medical Systems (GEM) needed financial guidance and under the supervision of Immelt, GEM became one of the world's most influential and successful medical-imaging companies. Immelt helped lead GEM's revolutionary mammogram technologies into mainstream medical care and brought the world's fastest CAT-scan machine to the marketplace.

With his overwhelming success, Immelt gained recognition both inside and outside of the company. With the impending retirement of the acclaimed CEO Jack Welch, Immelt became one of a half dozen candidates for the position. By 2000, the list had been narrowed down to three people and Immelt was a clear favorite. GE announced Immelt's selection as CEO on November 27, 2000.

Immelt fought pressure to sell off divisions of GE and focus on core products, saying that each one of GE's companies was a part of a collective whole. Immelt helped keep GE afloat during scandals and financial crises in a post-9/11 America, giving him a difficult first year as CEO. Despite the hardships, Immelt continued to grow the GE brand and revolutionize the internal structure of the company. He kept managers in divisions longer so they could feel the consequences of their decisions whether good or bad. He also revived GE's old Schenectady lab in New York and renamed it the Global Research Center where scientists experiment with everything from nanotechnology to hydrogen power. Immelt felt that GE needed to diversify it's holdings even more and helped build a new multi-media division that included cable-television channels.

For the first few years as GE CEO, Jeffrey R. Immelt focused on using technology better, diversifying management within the company, and reaching the consumer in order to connect with their needs. He has focused on bringing different people and faces into stronger leadership positions within the company in order to help give GE not only new ideas but also new faces to relate to the public. Although he has been compared to his predecessor, Jack Welch, Immelt has clearly created his own style of managing General Electric.

by
anand kumar pandey
pgdm sec-a
3rd sem