Despite Immelt’s winning streak, he encountered setbacks.

After Immelt’s plastics division missed its 1995 earnings target by $50 million, he says Welch gave him a warning.

“I love you, and I know you can do better,” his mentor said, according to a 2001 Fortune Magazine article. “But I’m going to take you out if you can’t get it fixed.”

He was able to fix the problem, and managed to avert a price collapse in the division.

During Immelt’s tenure, from 1997 to 2000, in the company’s medical business, he increased profits threefold, developing a reputation as an innovative leader who delivered what he promised. It is this reputation that earned him the respect of the G.E. Board of Directors, who elected him CEO in 1999.

A B-SCHOOL BOY

Before his climb up the corporate ladder, Immelt enrolled at HBS in 1980, after a stint at Proctor & Gamble. In the intensely competitive atmosphere of HBS, Immelt seems to have held his ground.

“I remember [Immelt],” says Shapiro, who taught the CEO when he was just a first-year. “[He was] very bright, very capable, very well rounded....He spoke well in class and stood out as an especially good listener.”

Shapiro said that Immelt “thrived” in the “funny mixture of cooperation and competitiveness” at HBS. “I would argue that he was one of the informal leaders,” he says.

THE CHOSEN SON

Growing up in Cincinnati, Ohio, Immelt certainly has the lineage to fit his current title—his father worked at G.E. Aircraft for 40 years.

And the tall and broad-shouldered Immelt was a natural leader even from his high-school days on.

At Finneytown High School, he was a straight-A student, a multi-sport athlete, a student council member, and active in the theater, according to a 2000 article in The Cincinnati Post.

Immelt played offensive tackle for the football team at Dartmouth College. In New Hampshire, he was also president of the now-abolished fraternity, Phi Delta Alpha, vice president of the interfraternity council, and a member of the secret society “Dragon.”

From the football field to the B-school—and back—Immelt will share his passion for leadership with the newest set of HBS graduates.

—Staff writer Sahil K. Mahtani can be reached at mahtani@fas.harvard.edu.