David L. Calhoun (born April 18, 1957) is an American businessman who has been president and chief executive officer (CEO) of

The Boeing Company The Boeing Company () is an American multinational corporation that designs, manufactures, and sells airplanes, rotorcraft, rockets, satellites, telecommunications equipment, and missiles worldwide. The company also provides leasing and product ...

since January 2020. He was previously Boeing's chairman and was appointed president and CEO after his predecessor

Dennis Muilenburg Dennis A. Muilenburg (born 1964) is an American engineer, business executive, and the former president and chief executive officer (CEO) of The Boeing Company, a multinational aerospace and defense company. He was CEO from 2015 to 2019, when h ...

was fired amidst safety concerns regarding the

737 MAX The Boeing 737 MAX is the fourth generation of the Boeing 737, a narrow-body airliner manufactured by Boeing Commercial Airplanes (BCA), a division of American company Boeing. It succeeds the Boeing 737 Next Generation (NG) and competes with th ...

after two fatal crashes that claimed the lives of 346 passengers and crew on board.

Early life and education

Calhoun was born April 18, 1957 in

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, largest city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the List of United States cities by population, sixth-largest city i ...

and grew up in Allentown, Pennsylvania. He attended Parkland High School in

South Whitehall Township, Pennsylvania South Whitehall Township is a township in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania. The township's population was 19,180 at the 2010 census. It is a suburb of Allentown and is part of the Lehigh Valley, which had a population of 861,899 and was the 68th most ...

, graduating in 1975. In high school, Calhoun was one of three captains of the varsity

basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular court, compete with the primary objective of shooting a basketball (approximately in diameter) through the defender's h ...

team and played golf. He attended

Virginia Tech Virginia Tech (formally the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and informally VT, or VPI) is a public land-grant research university with its main campus in Blacksburg, Virginia. It also has educational facilities in six re ...

, graduating in 1979 with a degree in accounting.

Career

After Calhoun graduated from college, he gained employment at

General Electric General Electric Company (GE) is an American multinational conglomerate founded in 1892, and incorporated in New York state and headquartered in Boston. The company operated in sectors including healthcare, aviation, power, renewable en ...

(GE). He decided to work for GE at that time, due to its close proximity to where he lived in

Lehigh Valley The Lehigh Valley (), known colloquially as The Valley, is a geographic region formed by the Lehigh River in Lehigh County and Northampton County in eastern Pennsylvania. It is a component valley of the Great Appalachian Valley bound to the no ...

. He worked at GE for 26 years, overseeing transportation, aircraft engines, reinsurance, lighting and other GE units, before ultimately being appointed as vice chairman of the company and a member of GE's Board of Directors in 2005. Calhoun left GE to join privately held global information services firm VNU as CEO in 2006. Under his leadership the company rebranded itself as Nielsen Holdings, returned to the public markets in 2011, and was added to the

S&P 500 Index The Standard and Poor's 500, or simply the S&P 500, is a stock market index tracking the stock performance of 500 large companies listed on stock exchanges in the United States. It is one of the most commonly followed equity indices. As of D ...

in 2013. In 2014, Calhoun became executive chairman of Nielsen, and also joined

The Blackstone Group Blackstone Inc. is an American alternative investment management company based in New York City. Blackstone's private equity business has been one of the largest investors in leveraged buyouts in the last three decades, while its real estate b ...

as a senior managing director and head of portfolio operations and a member of Blackstone's management committee. Blackstone had been one of six private equity firms that backed Nielsen's transformation. During his career, Calhoun was on the board of directors of Caterpillar, Gates Corporation, and Medtronic.

Boeing

Since 2009, Calhoun has served as a director at

Boeing The Boeing Company () is an American multinational corporation that designs, manufactures, and sells airplanes, rotorcraft, rockets, satellites, telecommunications equipment, and missiles worldwide. The company also provides leasing and p ...

, and was named lead independent director in 2018. In October 2019, he was named chairman of Boeing in the wake of the

Boeing 737 MAX groundings The Boeing 737 MAX passenger airliner was grounded worldwide between March 2019 and December 2020longer in many jurisdictionsafter 346 people died in two crashes: Lion Air Flight 610 on October 29, 2018 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 on Ma ...

, and on December 23, 2019, he stepped down as chairman in preparation for becoming Boeing's CEO and president, effective January 13, 2020. In a March 2020 interview with ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'', Calhoun discussed the

's MCAS software, saying the Boeing had made a "fatal mistake" in expecting that pilots could immediately correct the software problems. He went on to explain that "pilots n_ n_Ethiopia_and_Indonesia">Ethiopia.html"_;"title="n_Ethiopia">n_ n_Ethiopia_and_Indonesia">Ethiopia.html"_;"title="n_Ethiopia">n_Ethiopia_and_Indonesia">Ethiopia_and_Indonesia.html"_;"title="Ethiopia.html"_;"title="n_Ethiopia">n_Ethiopia_and_Indonesia">Ethiopia.html"_;"title="n_Ethiopia">n_Ethiopia_and_Indonesiadon't_have_anywhere_near_the_experience_that_they_have_here_in_the_U.S.";_he_unsuccessfully_requested_to_go_Off_the_record_(journalism).html" ;"title="Ethiopia_and_Indonesia.html" ;"title="Ethiopia_and_Indonesia.html" ;"title="Ethiopia.html" ;"title="n Ethiopia">n Ethiopia and Indonesia">Ethiopia.html" ;"title="n Ethiopia">n Ethiopia and Indonesia">Ethiopia_and_Indonesia.html" ;"title="Ethiopia.html" ;"title="n Ethiopia">n Ethiopia and Indonesia">Ethiopia.html" ;"title="n Ethiopia">n Ethiopia and Indonesiadon't have anywhere near the experience that they have here in the U.S."; he unsuccessfully requested to go Off the record (journalism)">off the record after being asked whether American pilots would have been able to control the situation, and then replied, "[f]orget it, you can guess the answer." In 2020, Boeing had a historically bad year, reporting a $12 billion loss and laying off 30,000 workers. At the same time, Calhoun earned $21.1 million in compensation.

Philanthropy

In 2018, Calhoun gave $20 million to

to create the Calhoun Honors Discovery Program.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Calhoun, Dave American chief executives of financial services companies Living people Virginia Tech alumni Businesspeople from Philadelphia Parkland High School (Allentown, Pennsylvania) alumni 1957 births Boeing people General Electric people 20th-century American businesspeople 21st-century American businesspeople