Alan Mulally

“It is about people working together for the good of all of us.” ~Alan Mulally

Alan Mulally has been the president and chief executive officer of the Ford Motor Company since September 2006.  He came to the position after a thirty seven year career at The Boeing Company as an engineer and an executive.  He took the job at a time when Ford was rapidly losing money and market share, and almost immediately began sweeping changes to turn the company around.

Mulally’s strategy included selling off major overseas car brands in order for the company to focus on Ford vehicles.  He reinstated the Ford Taurus, a model that was one of Ford’s best sellers before it had been removed from the manufacturing line.  Overall, Alan Mulally’s business strategy is called the Ford ONE plan, which unites the company under one global strategy while capitalizing on what each region does best.

During the 2009 financial crises, where two of the “Big 3” American automakers declared bankruptcy and took bailout money, Alan Mulally decided to decline the bailout, although did take out $23 billion in loans several years earlier.  During that time, Mulally also decreased his compensation and sold private company jets.  He negotiated new deals with the labor unions in Detroit, where the main manufacturing operations are, decreasing labor costs significantly.  The company has been profitable for the last four years, after losing money for nearly a decade before Mulally came on board.

Alan Mulally has a Master of Science degree in aeronautical and astronautical engineering from the University of Kansas, and a Master’s degree in management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  He was named on the Time 100 list in 2009, and was the Financial Times person of the year in 2011.  The University of Kansas awarded him an honorary PhD last year for his contributions to transportation.