Jack Welch was the child of a railroad conductor, born and raised outside Boston. He worked as a golf caddie, newspaper delivery boy, shoe salesman, and drill press operator, throughout middle school and high school.
Welch joined GE in 1960 as a junior engineer after his PhD in Chemical Engineering. He was frustrated with the bureaucracy, and planned on leaving, but decided to stay after an executive insisted he'd work on creating a small-company atmosphere.
In 1981 at the age of 45, he became the youngest-ever chairman & CEO of General Electric. He dismantled many layers of management, finally fulfilling his wish that nearly led to him leaving GE to begin with.
In his 20 years as CEO, he grew the company from $12 billion to $410 billion in market cap. Fortune magazine named him "Manager of the Century."
He fiercely believed in free markets. Even despite the comments in this thread on his anti-Climate Change perspective, he believed that "every business must embrace green products and green ways of doing business", as that's what the people, and thus the markets, wanted.
Another interesting note: "Regarding shareholder value, Welch said in a Financial Times interview on the global financial crisis of 2008–2009, "On the face of it, shareholder value is the dumbest idea in the world. Shareholder value is a result, not a strategy...your main constituencies are your employees, your customers and your products".