Tyson, John H. 1953–

John H. Tyson 1953–

Chairman and chief executive officer, Tyson Foods

Nationality: American.

Born: September 5, 1953, in Springdale, Arkansas.

Education: Southern Methodist University, BA, 1975.

Family: Son of Donald John Tyson (a food company executive) and Twilla Jean Womochil; married Kimberly McCoy; children: two.

Career: Tyson Foods, 1975–1993, North Carolina complex manager, vice president of marketing for corporate accounts, purchasing manager, retail-sales manager for Northeast Region; 1993–1998, president of Beef and Pork division; 1998–2000, chairman; 2000–, chairman and CEO.

Awards: Man of the Year, Arkansas Poultry Federation, 1994; Citizen of the Year, March of Dimes, Little Rock, Arkansas, 2000.

Address: Tyson Foods, 2210 West Oaklawn Drive, Springdale, Arkansas 72762-6999; http://www.tysonfoodsinc.com.

■ Expectations were not particularly high when in 2000 John H. Tyson was confirmed as chairman and chief executive officer of Tyson Foods, the giant poultry-processing company founded 65 years earlier by his grandfather. Tyson had a somewhat checkered past, having been effectively sidelined from business by nasty twin addictions to cocaine and alcohol in the late 1980s. Although he had worked in the family business since his teens, through much of his early career he had been given relatively marginal responsibilities. Tyson had been named chairman of the company in 1998 but had shared responsibilities for leading the company with the then CEO Wayne Britt; it was Britt who won praise for leading Tyson Foods to a sharp jump in earnings in the late 1990s. To some outside observers it seemed that Tyson had little more going for him than the family name.

The skeptics and naysayers were in for a surprise. Under Tyson's direction, Tyson Foods emerged as the world's largest

John H. Tyson. AP/Wide World Photos .

protein-processing company largely on the strength of its 2001 acquisition of the South Dakota–based IBP, a giant processor of beef and pork. That acquisition, as engineered by John Tyson, accomplished what his father, Donald J. Tyson, had attempted but failed to do during his tenure as chairman and CEO—namely, to successfully diversify beyond the confines of the poultry business. As of early 2003 Tyson Foods was producing roughly 25 percent of all the meat products consumed in the United States, according to Greg Lee, the company's co–chief operating officer and group president for food service and international business.

COMPANY PROFITS CLIMB IN WAKE OF ACQUISITION

John H. Tyson, grandson of the Tyson Foods founder John W. Tyson, was born in Springdale, Arkansas, home of the family business, on September 5, 1953. At the time of Tyson's birth his father, Donald J. Tyson, was manager of the company's Springdale plant. His mother, Twilla Jean, devoted her energies to raising Tyson and his sisters, Cheryl and Carla. Two years after Tyson's birth his father was promoted to president, a post he held until 1967 when he succeeded John W. Tyson, who had passed away, as chairman and chief executive officer. While attending Springdale High School, John H. Tyson began working weekends in the family company's plants.

In the summer of 1969 Donald Tyson arranged for his 16-year-old son to spend the summer working at a company poultry-processing plant in Green Forest, Arkansas. According to a 2002 profile of John H. Tyson in Fortune , part of his responsibilities involved the unloading of chicken coops from a truck and placing them on a conveyor belt. After watching a longtime plant employee demonstrate each step in this process, Tyson noted, "I said to myself, 'That didn't look difficult'"; when the teenager attempted to replicate the task, he grabbed onto a coop and hefted it head-high but made the mistake of tilting it the wrong way. As a result, the chicken excrement lining the bottom of the coop slid in his direction. "It hit me right in the face," Tyson recalled, "and slid down the front of my shirt" (May 13, 2002).

STUDIES BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION AT SMU

After graduating from high school, Tyson enrolled at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, to study business administration. When he received his bachelor's degree in 1975, he returned to Springdale to take his place in the family business. Over the next several years he worked his way through a series of farm, sales, and purchasing positions, none of which were particularly demanding from a management standpoint. Largely on the strength of his family ties, Tyson was appointed to the company's board of directors in 1984. The latter half of the 1980s found Tyson in the grip of a double addiction to alcohol and cocaine. Fortune reported that during a 1998 legal proceeding Tyson acknowledged the magnitude of his substance-abuse struggle: "The only reason I was on the payroll was because I was the son of the boss. Any other corporation, I would have been thrown to the wolves" (May 13, 2002).