Exxon Mobil

Samuel J. Palmisano was president and chief executive officer of IBM until January 2012. He continues to serve as Chairman of IBM. Palmisano was... elected president and chief operating officer effective in October 2000. He was promoted to CEO in March 2002 and named chairman effective January 1, 2003. Mr. Palmisano announced on October 25th, 2011 that he was stepping aside as president and CEO. Ginni Rometty is the new CEO and President. As of 2009 IBM was the largest IT company in the world and 45th largest company overall. Palmisano grew up in a large Catholic middle class family in Baltimore, Maryland. His father owned a body shop. As an offensive lineman at Calvert Hall College High School in Baltimore, Maryland he prepared earnestly, studying pregame scouting reports and seldom missed a blocking assignment. He was also a union musician, and once played backup saxophone for The Temptations. He holds a bachelor's degree in history from Johns Hopkins University where he was member of Beta Theta Pi. He did well in football there, and turned down an opportunity to try out with the Oakland Raiders.
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Henry A. McKinnell, Jr. is the former chief executive officer and former chairman of the board of directors of Pfizer Inc. He is also a director of... ExxonMobil and Moody's. He was born in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. He originally worked toward a degree in Chemistry but later changed his declared degree to Business. He earned his bachelors degree for business from the University of British Columbia in 1965. Later, he earned his masters and doctorate in business administration from Stanford Business School. His first job offer was for Pfizer, but he instead chose to work at American Standard for three years . He later joined Pfizer in early 1971. Over the course of the next 32 years, McKinnell climbed his way up several positions. He was named CEO as of January 2001 and named chairman in April 2001. In 2003 he won the Woodrow Wilson Award for Corporate Citizenship. McKinnell was known as an aggressive and hard line advocate of trade sanctions against developing countries in disputes over patents and other intellectual property rights on medicines.
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William W. George is an author, professor of Management Practice at Harvard Business School, and former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Medtronic.