Business Executive and Chemical Engineer. He was the chairman and CEO of General Electric (GE) between 1981 and 2001. He received a severance payment of $417 million when he retired from GE which was the largest payment of its kind in business history. He attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst and graduated in 1957 with a Bachelor of Science degree in chemical engineering. He then went to graduate school at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, graduating with a master's and a PhD in chemical engineering. Joining General Electric in 1960 as a junior chemical engineer, he became vice president and in charge of GE's plastics division in 1968, which at the time was a $26 million operation for GE. He continued to take on responsibilities and also became the vice president of GE's metallurgical and chemical divisions then was named the head of strategic planning for GE where he had moved up to the corporate headquarters. His next promotion came soon to senior vice president and head of Consumer Products and Services Division in 1977. He became the vice chairman of GE in 1979. Welch became GE's youngest chairman and CEO in 1981. His goal was to streamline GE and while he was CEO, GE increased market value from $12 billion in 1981 to $410 billion when he retired, making 600 acquisitions while shifting into emerging markets. He liked to make unexpected visits to GE's plants and offices and popularized the "rank and yank" policies used now by other corporate entities. He extended the stock options program at GE making it available to top executives to nearly one third of all employees. After retiring from General Electric, he became an adviser to a private equity firm and to the chief executive of IAC. He was also active on the public speaking circuit and co-wrote a popular column for BusinessWeek with his wife, Suzy Welch, for four years until November 2009. The column was syndicated by The New York Times. In 2005, he published Winning, a book about management co-written with his wife, Suzy, which reached number one on The Wall Street Journal bestseller list and appeared on New York Times Best Seller list. He started a program at Chancellor University in 2009 that offered an online Master of Business Administration called the Jack Welch Management Institute (JWMI). It was attained by Strayer University in 2011. He was known to be active with the curriculum, faculty and students since the beginning of the institution. The program has also been named one of the Top 25 Online MBA Programs four years in a row (2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020) by The Princeton Review. He played a cameo role as himself in 2010 in the NBC sitcom 30 Rock appearing in the season four episode "Future Husband" where he confronts Alec Baldwin's character, Jack Donaghy, to confirm the sale of NBC Universal to a fictional Philadelphia-based cable company called Kabletown. The sale is a satirical reference to the real-world acquisition of NBCUniversal from General Electric by Comcast in November 2009. In 2006, his net worth was estimated at $720 million. He died from kidney failure at his home in New York City at age 84.