Bill Ford

William Clay Ford Jr., known as Bill Ford, is an American businessman and the executive chairman of Ford Motor Company, the family firm his great-grandfather Henry Ford founded in 1903. Born in Detroit in May 1957 to William Clay Ford Sr. and Martha Firestone, he grew up moving between the family's homes in Grosse Pointe and Ann Arbor, attended Hotchkiss School, took a bachelor's degree from Princeton in 1979, and earned a master's in management from MIT Sloan in 1984.

He joined Ford in 1979 as a product analyst and rotated through finance, manufacturing, sales, and marketing posts in North America and Europe. Elected to the company's board in 1988, he chaired its finance committee from 1995 and became chairman in 1999, succeeding his uncle Edsel Ford II's mentor Alex Trotman.

From October 2001 to September 2006 he served as chairman and chief executive, leading the firm through the post-9/11 downturn before recruiting Boeing's Alan Mulally as CEO in a switch widely credited with steering Ford through the 2008 financial crisis without federal bailout. Ford remained executive chairman, championing investments in hybrids and the Rouge plant's living-roof rebuild and helping launch the all-electric F-150 Lightning programme announced in 2021.

He has chaired the Detroit Lions since 2014, the National Football League franchise his family has owned since 1963, and serves on numerous environmental and civic boards in Michigan. He continues to lead the board through the company's transition to electrified vehicles.

The given name Bill, an English short form of William, comes from the Germanic Wilhelm, joining wil meaning "will" or "desire" and helm meaning "helmet" or "protection." An old conqueror's name, it suits a man steering one of America's oldest manufacturing dynasties through generational change.