Bill George

Bill George

Former Chairman and CEO, Medtronic, and Author, “Discover Your True North”

Older man with white hair in a suit and red tie gestures with his right hand while looking forward against a plain background.

Bill George is a senior fellow at Harvard Business School. He is the author of Discover Your True North, The Discover Your True North Fieldbook, Authentic Leadership, True North, Finding Your True North, 7 Lessons for Leading in Crisis, and True North Groups.

George is the former chairman and chief executive officer of Medtronic. He joined Medtronic in 1989 as president and chief operating officer and served as chief executive officer from 1991-2001 and board chair from 1996-2002. Earlier in his career, he was a senior executive with Honeywell and Litton Industries and served in the U.S. Department of Defense.

He has served on the boards of Goldman Sachs, ExxonMobil, Novartis, Target Corporation, and the World Economic Forum USA. He concluded his term as a trustee of the Mayo Clinic and has been board chair for Allina Health System, Abbott-Northwestern Hospital, United Way of the Greater Twin Cities, and Advamed.

In 2014, the Franklin Institute awarded him the Bower Award for Business Leadership. In 2018, George was presented with the Larry Foster Award for Integrity in Public Communication by the Arthur W. Page Center. George is a CNBC contributor and makes frequent appearances on television and radio.

He received his BSIE with high honors from Georgia Tech; his MBA with high distinction from Harvard University, where he was a Baker Scholar; and honorary doctorates from Georgia Tech, Mayo Medical School, University of St. Thomas, Augsburg College, and Bryant University. From 2002-2003, he was a professor at IMD International and Ecole Polytechnique in Lausanne, Switzerland and executive-in-residence at Yale School of Management.

5 min
Harvard management professor Bill George explains why we need to keep our standards up, and why tax laws need to change.
7 min
Bill George, a board member of Goldman Sachs, on the changing landscape of Wall Street bonuses in the wake of the economic crisis—and why government intervention is more harm than […]
5 min
The former Medtronic CEO Bill George remembers a personal experience that showed him how most leaders are afraid to face their own crises.
32 min
A conversation with the Harvard Business School professor of management practice.
1 min
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