William Clay Ford Jr. (born May 3, 1957) is an American businessman, serving as executive chairman 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 automobiles ...

. The great-grandson of company founder

Henry Ford Henry Ford (July 30, 1863 – April 7, 1947) was an American Technological and industrial history of the United States, industrialist, business magnate, founder of the Ford Motor Company, and chief developer of the assembly line technique of ...

, Ford joined the board in 1988 and has served as chairman since January 1999. Ford also served as the

president President most commonly refers to: *President (corporate title) * President (education), a leader of a college or university *President (government title) President may also refer to: Automobiles * Nissan President, a 1966–2010 Japanese f ...

CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especiall ...

, and COO until turning over those roles to former

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 ...

executive

Alan Mulally Alan Roger Mulally (born August 4, 1945) is an American aerospace engineer and manufacturing executive. He is the former President and Chief Executive Officer of the Ford Motor Company. He retired from Ford Motor Company on July 1, 2014. Ford ...

in September 2006. Ford is also the vice chairman of the

Detroit Lions The Detroit Lions are a professional American football team based in Detroit. The Lions compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) North Division. The team play their home games at For ...

NFL The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league that consists of 32 teams, divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The NFL is one of the major ...

franchise. Ford serves as a chairman of the

United States-Mexico Chamber of Commerce United may refer to: Places * United, Pennsylvania, an unincorporated community * United, West Virginia, an unincorporated community Arts and entertainment Films * ''United'' (2003 film), a Norwegian film * ''United'' (2011 film), a BBC Two fi ...

Early life and education

Ford was born in

Detroit, Michigan Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at ...

, the great-grandson of

Henry Ford I Henry Ford (July 30, 1863 – April 7, 1947) was an American industrialist, business magnate, founder of the Ford Motor Company, and chief developer of the assembly line technique of mass production. By creating the first automobile that mi ...

and great-grandson of Harvey S. Firestone. His father was William Clay Ford Sr. and his mother is Martha Firestone. On his mother's side, his grandparents are

Harvey S. Firestone Jr. Harvey Samuel Firestone Jr. (April 20, 1898 – June 1, 1973) was an American businessman. He was chairman of the board of the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company. Biography He was born on April 20, 1898, to Harvey Samuel Firestone and Idabel ...

and Elizabeth Parke. On his father's side, his grandparents are Edsel Ford I and Eleanor Lowthian Clay. Edsel Ford II, son of

Henry Ford II Henry Ford II (September 4, 1917 – September 29, 1987), sometimes known as "Hank the Deuce", was an American businessman in the automotive industry. He was the oldest son of Edsel Ford I and oldest grandson of Henry Ford I. He was president o ...

and also a board member, is his first cousin. Ford has three sisters: Martha Morse (who has 3 children), Sheila Hamp (who has 3 children), and Elizabeth Kontulis. He, like his great-grandfather Henry Ford, is of mainly Irish, English, and Belgian descent. Ford graduated from the

Hotchkiss School The Hotchkiss School is a coeducational preparatory school in Lakeville, Connecticut, United States. Hotchkiss is a member of the Eight Schools Association and Ten Schools Admissions Organization. It is also a former member of the G30 Schools gr ...

in Connecticut in 1975. He then attended

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the n ...

and graduated with an A.B. in history in 1979 after completing a 105-page long senior thesis titled "

and Labor: A Reappraisal." While a student at Princeton, Ford was president of the

Ivy Club The Ivy Club, often simply Ivy, is the oldest eating club at Princeton University, and it is "still considered the most prestigious" by its members. It was founded in 1879 with Arthur Hawley Scribner as its first head. Ivy is one of the "Big Fo ...

and played on the Princeton rugby team. In 1984 he received an M.S. in management as a Sloan Fellow from the

MIT Sloan School of Management The MIT Sloan School of Management (MIT Sloan or Sloan) is the business school of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT Sloan offers bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degree programs, a ...

Career

He joined Ford in 1979 and held a variety of positions, beginning in product development and on the financial staff, a grooming ground for future executives. He served several years as a mid-ranking executive in product development. He also briefly headed the Climate Control Division (since divested from the company as part of the

Visteon Visteon Corporation (VC) is an American global automotive electronics supplier and Fortune 500 company spun off from the Ford Motor Company in 2000. Visteon is composed of multiple businesses that design, engineer, and manufacture vehicle cockpit ...

spinoff). At the time of the Ford 2000 reorganization, he was in charge of heavy truck operations.

Corporate governance

Ford gave up an executive position in heavy truck program management to become chairman of the finance committee on the board of directors, a non-executive corporate governance position. He was elected chairman of the board in September 1998 and took office on January 1, 1999. Ford added the title of

chief executive officer A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especial ...

on October 30, 2001, following the ouster of then-CEO

Jacques Nasser Jacques Albert Nasser (Arabic: جاك نصر; born 12 December 1947) is a Lebanese Australian American business executive and philanthropist. Known for a management career at Ford Motor Company spanning several decades and continents, from 1 ...

. With the retirement of Ford

and

chief operating officer A chief operating officer or chief operations officer, also called a COO, is one of the highest-ranking executive positions in an organization, composing part of the " C-suite". The COO is usually the second-in-command at the firm, especially if t ...

Jim Padilla in April 2006, Bill Ford assumed those roles as well. On September 5, 2006, Ford announced that he was stepping down as president and CEO, naming former

senior executive

as his replacement. Ford continues as the company's executive chairman. At the time of his stepping down, Ford was ranked 264th on ''

Forbes ''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine owned by Integrated Whale Media Investments and the Forbes family. Published eight times a year, it features articles on finance, industry, investing, and marketing topics. ''Forbes'' also r ...

list of top-earning CEOs, at $10 million per year.

Business developments

In 2000, he announced that the company would achieve a 25% improvement in fuel efficiency in the company's light truck fleet, including SUVs, by mid-decade. Under his direction,

made technological progress toward improving fuel efficiency, with the introduction of the Hybrid Electric Escape, the most fuel-efficient SUV on the market, achieving 36 mpg (EPA) in city driving. The Escape's platform mates Mercury Mariner and

Mazda Tribute The (''Code J14'') is a compact SUV made by Japanese automaker Mazda from 2000 to 2011. It was jointly developed with Ford Motor Company and based on the front-wheel drive Mazda 626 platform, which was in turn the basis for the similar Fo ...

were also scheduled to receive hybrid-electric powertrain options, along with other upcoming vehicles in the Ford product line including the Ford Fusion and Mercury Milan. Ford announced that half of the vehicle lineup would be available with advanced hybrid-electric powerplant options by 2010, although the Company's earlier pledge to build 250,000 hybrid vehicles a year by 2010 proved to be overly optimistic and had to be abandoned. Ford also continued to study

Fuel Cell A fuel cell is an electrochemical cell that converts the chemical energy of a fuel (often hydrogen fuel, hydrogen) and an oxidizing agent (often oxygen) into electricity through a pair of redox reactions. Fuel cells are different from most bat ...

-powered electric powertrains and demonstrated hydrogen-fueled internal combustion engine technologies, as well as developing the next-generation hybrid-electric systems. In addition to the Ford Escape, Hybrid Escape, Mercury Mariner, and Mazda Tribute, Ford marketed high efficiency crossover SUVs such as the Ford Freestyle, the Volvo XC70 and the Volvo XC90. Ford also developed new crossover SUVs, such as the

Ford Edge The Ford Edge is a range of crossover SUVs manufactured by the Ford Motor Company. Introduced for the 2007 model year, the Edge is the first mid-size CUV marketed by Ford in North America; the model line is currently in its second generation. ...

Lincoln MKX The Lincoln MKX is a mid-size luxury crossover SUV marketed and sold by the Lincoln brand of Ford Motor Company. As Lincoln is phasing out its use of "MK" model names, the MKX adopted the Lincoln Nautilus nameplate as part of a mid-cycle updat ...

, and

Mazda CX-7 The Mazda CX-7 is a mid-size crossover SUV from Mazda, and is the production version of the MX-Crossport concept car. It was shown publicly for the first time at the 2006 LA Auto Show in January. Production officially began on February 20, 2006 in ...

. Ford expanded its lineup of

flexible-fuel vehicle A flexible-fuel vehicle (FFV) or dual-fuel vehicle (colloquially called a flex-fuel vehicle) is an alternative fuel vehicle with an internal combustion engine designed to run on more than one fuel, usually gasoline blended with either ethanol or ...

alternative fuel vehicle An alternative fuel vehicle is a motor vehicle that runs on alternative fuel rather than traditional petroleum fuels (petrol or petrodiesel). The term also refers to any technology (e.g. electric car, hybrid electric vehicles, solar-powered ve ...

s, and dual-fuel vehicles. Flexible fuel vehicles can operate on a range of fuel mixtures – such as ethanol-gasoline blends ranging from pure gasoline to E85 (85%

ethanol Ethanol (abbr. EtOH; also called ethyl alcohol, grain alcohol, drinking alcohol, or simply alcohol) is an organic compound. It is an alcohol with the chemical formula . Its formula can be also written as or (an ethyl group linked to a h ...

, 15% gasoline). Alternative fuel vehicles operate on non-petroleum fuels, such as methanol,

compressed natural gas Compressed natural gas (CNG) is a fuel gas mainly composed of methane (CH4), compressed to less than 1% of the volume it occupies at standard atmospheric pressure. It is stored and distributed in hard containers at a pressure of , usually in ...

(CNG),

propane Propane () is a three-carbon alkane with the molecular formula . It is a gas at standard temperature and pressure, but compressible to a transportable liquid. A by-product of natural gas processing and petroleum refining, it is commonly used as ...

, and hydrogen. Dual fuel vehicles generally have two fuel tanks – one for compressed natural gas or propane, and another for regular gasoline – with a selector switch to choose between them. Vehicles using those fueling alternatives were in test fleets, for example as taxis and shuttle buses, and some were available for sale to the public. Ford was committed to sell 250,000 alternative and flexible fuel vehicles – the majority of which would be designed to operate on ethanol-gasoline blends such as E85 – in 2006. Speaking at conference in November 2000 in

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

, Ford suggested that the company might one day offer a service where it owns vehicles and makes them available to people when they need access to them. Market competition, health care, and raw material costs led Ford to announce a second restructuring for its North American operations in four years. Ford's restructuring plan, dubbed "

The Way Forward Ford Motor Company's restructuring plan, made public in 2006, was known as The Way Forward. Ford was attempting to reduce fixed capital costs while maintaining a special focus on cars and car-based crossover vehicles. Over time, it hoped to make ...

", reversed a $1.6 billion loss during 2009 in its North American operations. The company returned to profitability in 2010.

Fontinalis Partners

Ford has been a vocal advocate for improvements to be made in all modes of global transportation, having stated that governments and private industry would need to rethink transportation infrastructure and technology as the global population expands and the existing infrastructure is unable to keep pace. In January 2010, he announced the launch of a strategic investment firm, Fontinalis Partners, with the purpose of investing in innovative companies developing next-generation mobility solutions. Ford co-founded the firm with Ralph Booth (Chairman and CEO of Booth American Company and a media and telecom investor), Mark Schulz (former head of Ford Motor Company's international operations), Chris Cheever, and Chris Thomas.

Personal life

Ford is married to Lisa Vanderzee Ford, and they have four children. He is first cousin to Alfred Ford. Ford has been a vegetarian since 1990, and adopted a

vegan Veganism is the practice of abstaining from the use of animal product—particularly in diet—and an associated philosophy that rejects the commodity status of animals. An individual who follows the diet or philosophy is known as a vegan. ...

diet in 2010.

References

External links

Fontinalis Partners Biography

William Ford Jr.'s campaign contributions

Bill Ford's ''The Way Forward'' speech – 23 Jan 2006

A lengthy ''

Bloomberg Bloomberg may refer to: People * Daniel J. Bloomberg (1905–1984), audio engineer * Georgina Bloomberg (born 1983), professional equestrian * Michael Bloomberg (born 1942), American businessman and founder of Bloomberg L.P.; politician and ...

'' article (2007) profiling Bill Ford and the 81-member family. * * , - {{DEFAULTSORT:Ford, William Clay Jr. 1957 births Living people American chairpersons of corporations American chief executives in the automobile industry American chief operating officers American male taekwondo practitioners American philanthropists Arena Football League executives Automotive businesspeople Businesspeople from Detroit Firestone family Ford executives Ford people Henry Ford family Hotchkiss School alumni MIT Sloan Fellows MIT Sloan School of Management alumni People in the automobile industry Princeton University alumni Detroit Lions executives