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Max Azria (age 70) - The Tunisian-born Azria was a fashion designer and businessman who founded the company BCBGMAXAZRIA. His company owned more than 20 fashion brands around the world including Jess, Hérve Léger, and the company that bore his name. Azria died May 6, 2019, of lung cancer.
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Frank Biondi (age 74) - Biondi's entertainment career began with a position at the Children's Entertainment Network. He joined HBO in 1978 and was CEO five years later. He went on to lead Viacom for nine years and later, Universal Pictures for three. Biondi died of cancer November 25, 2019.
Henry W. Bloch (age 96) - Henry Bloch was the "H" in H & R Block, the tax-preparing company he founded with his brother Richard in 1955. A Harvard-trained entrepreneur, Bloch gave back to his Kansas City hometown by endowing the business department of the University of Missouri-Kansas City and the local art museum. Bloch died April 23, 2019.
Joseph Boardman (age 69) - Boardman was a commissioner of the New York Department of Transportation from 1997 until he resigned in 2005 to become the head of the Federal Railroad Association. From that position, he was appointed to head Amtrak in 2008, a position he held until his retirement in 2016. Boardman died as a result of a stroke on March 7, 2019.
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John C. Bogle (age 89) - "Jack" Bogle was the founder of and the major investor in mutual fund company The Vanguard Group. The company, founded in 1974, holds more than $5 trillion in assets. Bogle led the group from its founding until stepping down from the CEO position for health reasons in 1996. Bogle died of cancer in January 16, 2019. |
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Gert Boyle (age 95) - Boyle's father was a German Jewish clothier who fled Nazi Germany when his daughter was 13. The family settled in Oregon, where they founded Columbia Hat Company in 1938. Boyle assumed leadership of the company in 1970, and changed focus to outerwear and sportswear. Boyle herself was featured in advertising, presenting herself as "One tough mother." She remained chairman of Columbia until her death on November 3, 2019. |
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Gary Burrell (age 81) - Burrell and a friend, Min Kao, collaborated to start Garmin Ltd. in the 1980s in hopes of using the then-crippled global positioning system (GPS) to assist in marine and aviation navigation. With the removal of the signal obfuscation, Garmin became a leader in the field of consumer GPS devices; an industry that earned Burrell more than a billion dollars. He died June 12, 2019. |
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| Jake Burton Carpenter (age 65) - New York native Jake Burton is celebrated as a father of the sport of snowboarding and founder of the Burton Snowboard company. In the '70s, Burton was instrumental in transforming the snowboard from a rope-pulled toy to a rival to snow skiing, founding his namesake company in the 1980s. He died of cancer on November 20, 2019. |  |
Chris Cline (age 60) - Following in the family business, Cline started as an underground coal miner in his twenties. By age 50, he had founded one of the largest coal companies in the US, Foresight Energy, and was worth in excess of one billion dollars. Foresight has holdings mainly in the Illinois Basin of Illinois and Indiana. Cline was killed in a helicopter crash in the Bahamas on July 4, 2019.
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Albert Dunlap (age 81) - Known to his many detractors as "Chainsaw Al," Dunlap was a pioneer of the art of buying a distressed company and "turning it around." Much of his turnaround strategy consisted of firing most of the employees, which won him few friends. When it was determined that many of his "successes" were in fact frauds, Dunlap was blacklisted from serving as a CEO. He died January 25, 2019.
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Jeffrey Epstein (age 66) - Epstein made his name as a banker and financial consultant with relationships with many of the "movers and shakers" of American society. Following a 2005 arrest for sex trafficking in Florida, Epstein was allowed to plead to a lesser charge. In 2019, however, he was arrested on multiple charges of sex crimes. He committed suicide by hanging while in jail awaiting trial on August 10, 2019.
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Mark Hurd (age 64) - Hurd had a long career in the technology sector; beginning with more than two decades at NCR (National Cash Register), where he rose from junior salesman to CEO. He left the company after two years at the top to take the CEO position at Hewlett-Packard, where he remained for five years. He moved from H-P to a co-CEO position at Oracle, where he remained from 2010 until his death. Hurd passed away October 18, 2019.
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Lee Iacocca (age 94) - Iacocca is the only person ever to have been the chief executive of two of the "big three" american car makers. He headed up Ford in the 1970s before becoming CEO of Chrysler in 1979. Iacocca shepherded the development of the Mustang and the Pinto while at Ford; at Chrysler he engineered a government bailout of the company. Iacocca died July 3, 2019, of Parkinson's disease. |
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Joan Johnson (age 89) - Johnson and her husband, George, founded the Johnson Products Company in 1954 and parlayed it into one of the largest black-owned companies in America. The company's products, aimed primarily at at African-American market, included Afro Sheen hair care products and cosmetics. Johnson passe away September 6, 2019.
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Ron Joyce (age 88) - Joyce and NHL great Tim Horton partnered in 1967 to found the coffee and doughnut chain named for Horton; of which Joyce's Hamilton, Ontario, store was the first franchise. Joyce bought control of the company after Horton's death in 1974, and continued to serve after the brand's takeover by Wendy's. Joyce died on January 31, 2019. |
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Herb Kelleher, (age 87) - With two partners, Kelleher created the first low-cost airline in the United States. First incorporated as Air Southwest Co. in 1967, Southwest Airlines took off for its first flight in 1971. Originally flying only in the "triangle" that included Houston, San Antonio, Austin, and Dallas, Texas; the airline now extends across more than 100 destinations in the US and ten other countries. Kelleher succumbed to prostate cancer on January 3, 2109. |
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Michael Kittredge (age 67) - Kittredge and two friends founded the Yankee Candle Company at age 16, eventually parlaying the company into 400-plus stores and nearly a billion dollars in annual sales. A two-time cancer survivor, Kittredge was an active philanthropist in the healthcare field, especially the Dana Farber Cancer Institute. He died July 24, 2019.
David Koch (age 79) - An American billionaire with massive holdings in extractive industries, particularly "downstream" petroleum, David Koch and his brother Charles Koch were even better known as ultraconservative political activists. Koch died August 23, 2019.
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Karl Lagerfeld (age 85) - German by birth, Lagerfeld is perhaps best known for his association with the French fashion house Chanel, where he was the creative director for more than 35 years. Rarely seen without dark glasses, Coca-Cola, and fingerless gloves; Lagerfeld was a fixture on runways around the world beginning in the 1960s. He also designed for Fendi and had his own label, Lagerfeld. The designer died February 19, 2019.
William Macaulay (age 74) - Macaulay was a founding partner and long-time CEO of First Reserve Corporation, the world's largest private equity. His position made him one of America's richest men, worth an estimated $1.1 billion in 2017. In 2006, Macaulay funded the creation of a business school named in his honor at CUNY, his alma mater. He passed away November 29, 2019.
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Peter Magowan (age 76) - Magowan joined the grocery company Safeway after graduating from college and, over the next 15 years, worked his way up to chairman and CEO of the company. It didn't hurt that his father was also CEO... I 1993, Magowan was one of a group that bought the San Francisco Giants, of whom he was the managing partner until 2008. Magowan died January 27, 2019, of cancer. |
Morton Mandel (age 98) - Mandel and his brothers founded the Premier Automotive Supply, an auto-parts distributor, in 1940. The company later branched into industrial and electronic parts, eventually becoming one of the largest such companies in the world. Mandel was chairman of the company for 36 years, dueing which he also became an active philanthropist in the Cleveland, Ohio, area. Mandel died October 16, 2019.
Donald Marron (age 85) - Marron was a financier who founded his own company in the 1950s and rode it all the way to the top of PaineWebber, which he sold in 2000. He then founded a privte equity firm specializing in financial services. Marron was well-known as an art collector and for his philanthropic work. His name is on the NYU's school of urban management and on a division of Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. He died December 6, 2019.
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Ron Miller (age 85) - After a brief career as a tight end for the Los Angeles Rams, Miller went to work for the Disney Corporation in 1956, after marrying the boss' daughter (Diane Disney) in 1954.He rose within the company to become CEO of the Walt Disney Company in 1978 and president of the board of directors of the Disney family museum. Miller died February 9, 2019. |
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Emilio Nicholás (age 88) - The Mexican-born Nicholás came to the US in his teens, attending school in San Antonio, Texas. He graduated with a chemistry degree and worked in research for several years before signing on as a producer with local Spanish-language radio station KCOR. He bought KCOR-TV in 1961, renamed it KWEX, and founded the Spanish International Network. KWEX ultimately became the foundation of Univision. SIN was the first US network to adopt satellite transmission of programming. Nicholás died October 12, 2019.
Edward Nixon (age 88) - The youngest brother of former U. S. President Richard M. Nixon, Edward was a geologist by trade and training. He operated an international consultancy from the Seattle, Washington area, mainly concerned with maintaining the U. S. supplies of critical minerals and fossil fuels. Nixon died February 27, 2019.
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Gerald Paul (age 90) - Paul and his family escaped Nazi Germany in 1938 and emigrated to the U. S. Though he did not speak English when he came to the US, Paul graduated from high school at 15 and began working in the clothing industry in his new home of Indianapolis. In 1952, he and Earl Harris founded the Paul Harris clothing chain, which eventually grew into a chain of almost 400 stores before folding in the 2001. Paul died October 29, 2019.
T. Boone Pickens (age 91) - Pickens trained as a geologist, entering the oil industry after college. He left Phillips Petroleum after just 4 years to found Mesa petroleum, which he parlayed into one of the largest independent oil companies in the world. He soon shifted his focus from the oil industry to hostile takeovers, starting with an attempt to swallow Gulf Oil. In later years, Pickens built some of the largest wind farms on earth. Pickens passed away September 11, 2019.
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Tony Rodham (age 64) - Rodham's varied careers included stints as a "repo" man, a corrections officer, and a private detective. In 1992, he began working on the presidential campaign of his brother-in-law Bill Clinton, and afterwards remained on the fringes of Democratic Party politics. He was, at one time, married to the daughter of California Senator Barbara Boxer. Critics claimed he often used his political connections to personal gain (duh: can you say "Jared"?). Rodham died June 7, 2019.
Warren Rosenthal (age 96) - Rosenthal founded two restaurant chains - Long John Silver's and Jerry's - and bred thoroughbred horses on his farm in Lexington, Kentucky. Rosenthal grew his seafood restaurant chain to more than 1300 properties worldwide before selling the chain to A&W in 1999. Rosenthal died October 19, 2019.
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Beverly Sackler (age 95) - Sackler was the wife of Raymond and father of Richard and Johnathan Sackler, all members of the English/American Sackler family that owns the Purdue Pharma Company. She was one of several family members named in the opioid class-action suit filed by several hundred states, counties, and cities. Sackler passed away October 14, 2019.
Joseph Segel (age 88) - Segel is the man responsible for both the QVC television network and that mainstay of Sunday newspaper supplements, the Franklin Mint. In all, Segel founded almost two dozen direct-marketing companies covering mail, magazines, and television. For his efforts, he was named one of the greatest business leaders of the 20th century by Harvard Business School. Segel died December 21, 2019.
Alfred E. Smith IV (age 68) - Smith, the great grandson of one-time New York Governor Al Smith, was a well-known NYC financier and philanthropist. He sat on the board of several charities and was chairman of the board of St. Vincent's and director of the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation. Smith died November 20, 2019.
Jeffrey Tarrant (age 63) - Tarrant founded or managed several hedge funds, including the Sequoia Fund; as was active in fields beyond finance. He was one of the backers of bitcoin development as well as instrumental in artificially-guided investment strategies. Tarrant also founded Candescent Films, a documentary film company that specializes in finance studies. Tarrant died August 5, 2019, of brain cancer.
Joe Tortorice (age 70) - Tortorice, a Texas native, was the founder of the regional Jason's Deli chain of restaurants. The chain has almost 250 locations in 28 states; after having started at a single Beaumont, Tex., location in 1976. Tortorice died of cancer August 10, 2019.
Bernard Tyson (age 60) - Tyson became CEO of Kaiser Permanente, one of the largest healthcare insurers in the U. S., in 2013, after more than 25 years with the organization. He was often cited as one of the most influential persons in the nation's medical community; and served on the board of the American Heart Association. He passed away November 10, 2019.
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Don Valentine (age 89) - Valentine started out as a salesman for tech companies like Raytheon and National Semiconductor, but ultimately founded the venture capital firm Seqouia Capital. The company specialized in tech ventures, among which were early investments in Atari and Apple. Valentine's company also helped stake Google, Oracle, Cisco, and YouTube. He died October 25, 2019.
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Leslie Wunderman (age 98) - Wunderman, a member of the Advertising Hall of Fame, is credited with the invention of direct marketing. Other marketing ploys that are credited to Wunderman include loyalty programs and the toll-free number for customer service. Wunderman died in New York on January 9, 2019.
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