James Patrick Hackett (born April 22, 1955) is an American businessman. He was the president and chief executive officer of

Ford Motor Company Ford Motor Company (commonly known as Ford) is an American multinational automobile manufacturer headquartered in Dearborn, Michigan, United States. It was founded by Henry Ford and incorporated on June 16, 1903. The company sells automobi ...

from May 2017 to October 2020.

Early life, education, and family

The Hackett family originally moved to Central

Ohio Ohio () is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. Of the List of states and territories of the United States, fifty U.S. states, it is the List of U.S. states and territories by area, 34th-l ...

via

County Carlow County Carlow ( ; ga, Contae Cheatharlach) is a Counties of Ireland, county located in the South-East Region, Ireland, South-East Region of Ireland, within the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster. Carlow is the List of Irish counties by ...

and

County Galway "Righteousness and Justice" , anthem = () , image_map = Island of Ireland location map Galway.svg , map_caption = Location in Ireland , area_footnotes = , area_total_km2 = ...

Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, in north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel, the Irish Sea, and St George's Channel. Ireland is the s ...

. Hackett is a 1977 graduate of the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

, where he played center on the football team. He holds a bachelor's degree in general studies. He and his wife, Kathy, have two sons. They reside in

Grand Rapids Grand Rapids is a city and county seat of Kent County in the U.S. state of Michigan. At the 2020 census, the city had a population of 198,917 which ranks it as the second most-populated city in the state after Detroit. Grand Rapids is the ...

Michigan Michigan () is a state in the Great Lakes region of the upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the 10th-largest state by population, the 11th-largest by area, and t ...

Career

From 1977 to 1981, Hackett held sales and management positions at

Procter & Gamble The Procter & Gamble Company (P&G) is an American multinational consumer goods corporation headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio, founded in 1837 by William Procter and James Gamble. It specializes in a wide range of personal health/consumer he ...

in Detroit, Michigan. Hackett spent thirty years with the Grand Rapids-based office furniture company

Steelcase Steelcase Inc. is an American manufacturer of furniture, casegoods, seating, and space solutions for offices, hospitals, classrooms, and residential interiors. It is headquartered in Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA. History Originally known as Th ...

. He joined Steelcase in 1981, holding a variety of sales and marketing positions. In 1994, Hackett was named CEO at age 39, making him the youngest leader in the history of the company. He held the position for nearly twenty years before retiring in 2014. During his tenure, Steelcase eliminated nearly 12,000 employees as part of a downsizing and restructuring of the business; he also led the company to acquire a majority stake in

IDEO IDEO () is a design and consulting firm with offices in the U.S., England, Germany, Japan, and China. It was founded in Palo Alto, California, in 1991. The company's 700 staff uses a design thinking approach to design products, services, enviro ...

in 1996. During this time Hackett became a proponent of

design thinking Design thinking refers to the set of cognitive, strategic and practical procedures used by designers in the process of designing, and to the body of knowledge that has been developed about how people reason when engaging with design problems. Des ...

, which focuses on how humans experience a product. Hackett stayed on as vice chairman of the company from 2014 to 2015. He was interim director of athletics at the University of Michigan, his alma mater, from October 31, 2014 to March 11, 2016. Hackett led the hiring of former

San Francisco 49ers The San Francisco 49ers (also written as the San Francisco Forty-Niners) are a professional American football team based in the San Francisco Bay Area. The 49ers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the league's Nationa ...

’ coach and fellow University of Michigan alumnus

Jim Harbaugh James Joseph Harbaugh (; born December 23, 1963) is an American football coach and former quarterback, who is the current and 20th head football coach of the Michigan Wolverines. He played college football at Michigan from 1983 to 1986. He play ...

as the university's football coach. He donated $300,000 of his annual $600,000 salary as interim athletic director to "Athletes Connected," a program that's designed to support the mental health of student-athletes. In 2013, Hackett joined the Ford Motor Company's board of directors. He served on its Sustainability and Innovation Committee and the Audit and the Nominating and Governance committees. Hackett oversaw the formation of Ford Smart Mobility, a unit responsible for experimenting with car-sharing programs at

, self-driving ventures and other programs aimed at helping Ford better compete with

Uber Uber Technologies, Inc. (Uber), based in San Francisco, provides mobility as a service, ride-hailing (allowing users to book a car and driver to transport them in a way similar to a taxi), food delivery ( Uber Eats and Postmates), pa ...

Alphabet Inc. Alphabet Inc. is an American multinational technology conglomerate holding company headquartered in Mountain View, California. It was created through a restructuring of Google on October 2, 2015, and became the parent company of Google and se ...

and other tech giants looking to edge in on the auto industry. On May 22, 2017, Hackett succeeded Mark Fields as president and CEO of Ford Motor Company. He is also a member of the company's board of directors. The move came as Ford announced cuts to its global workforce amid efforts to address the company's declining share price and to improve profits. The company is targeting $3 billion in cost reduction and a nearly 10 percent reduction in the salaried workforce in Asia and North America to enhance earnings in 2018. Hackett serves on the board of directors for

Northwestern Mutual Life Northwestern Mutual is an American financial services mutual organization based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The financial security company provides consultation on wealth and asset income protection, education planning, retirement planning, investme ...

in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and the Steelcase Foundation in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He is a member of the executive committee of the board of directors for the National Center for Arts and Technology, as well as the boards of advisors to the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy and the

Life Sciences Institute The Life Sciences Institute (LSI) is a collaborative, multidisciplinary research institution located on the campus of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. It encompasses 27 faculty-led teams from 13 schools and departments throughout U-M. Th ...

at the University of Michigan. Additionally, he is a past president of the Institute of Design Board of Overseers at the

Illinois Institute of Technology Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Tracing its history to 1890, the present name was adopted upon the merger of the Armour Institute and Lewis Institute in 1940. The university has prog ...

. In January 2019, Hackett sent an email to Ford employees that read, "2018 was mediocre by any standard. Yes, we made $7 billion last year. But think of it this way: this represents a 4.4 percent operating margin, about half what we believe is an appropriate margin. So we are aiming for much closer to $14 billion.” On August 4, 2020, Ford announced that COO Jim Farley will succeed Jim Hackett as the CEO of Ford on October 1, 2020. Hackett retired and become a special adviser until March 2021. Hackett holds a position on the Board of Directors for State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hackett, James University of Michigan College of Literature, Science, and the Arts alumni Ford executives Living people American manufacturing businesspeople American chief operating officers Michigan Wolverines football players American people of Irish descent 1955 births American chief executives in the automobile industry