Lee Iacocca ‘45

1992 – Retires as chairman of Chrysler Corp

In June, 2005 Lido Anthony Iacocca was named by CNN as the fifth most influential businessperson of the past 25 years, edged out by the likes of Bill Gates and Warren Buffet.

Iacocca was born on October 25, 1924 in Allentown, PA, three years after his parents emigrated from Italy. In 1945 he graduated from Lehigh with a B.S. in Industrial Engineering and then attended Princeton for a year on a scholarship. He began his professional career as an engineer at Ford Motor Company and soon entered its sales and management ranks. As general manager of the Ford Division, he was the driving force behind the design of the 1964 Mustang. Six years later, Iacocca was named President of Ford.

In July of 1978, Iacocca was fired from Ford though the company turned in two billion dollars in profits the preceding year. Less than five months later he was hired as president of the nearly-defunct Chrysler Corporation. His leadership there would eventually help transform the firm’s fortunes and cement his place in the landscape of American business. He is credited with saving the company from bankruptcy by championing the development of Chrysler’s K-car series and the world’s first minivan. When Iacocca retired from Chrysler in 1992, the firm’s profits were up and thousands of American manufacturing jobs were secure.

As a philanthropist, Iacocca has donated millions of dollars to various institutions and charitable foundations. At Lehigh, he led the fundraising campaign to purchase the Mountaintop Campus from Bethlehem Steel and jointly started the Iacocca Institute, an organization dedicated to increasing the global competitiveness of American organizations. His wife’s death in 1983 from diabetes inspired him to devote much of his time and energy into raising funds for diabetes research.

 

     

P.C. Rossin College of Engineering and Applied Science
Lehigh University • Packard Laboratory, 19 Memorial Drive West, Bethlehem, PA 18015 • (610) 758-4025