Herb Kelleher

Herbert "Herb" David Kelleher (born March 12, 1931) is the co-founder, Chairman Emeritus and former CEO of Southwest Airlines (based in the United States). 2Early life and career Kelleher was born in Camden, New Jersey on March 12, 1931 and raised in Audubon, New Jersey, where he graduated from Haddon Heights High School. He has a bachelor's degree from Wesleyan University where he was an Olin Scholar and where his major was English and his minor Philosophy, and a Juris Doctor from New York University where he was a Root-Tilden Scholar. At Wesleyan he was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity. He is married to the former Joan Negley and they have four children. 2Career The Kellehers moved to Texas intending to start a law firm or a business. Kelleher and one of his law clients, Texas businessman Rollin King, created the concept with banker John Parker that later became Southwest Airlines on a cocktail napkin in a San Antonio restaurant. From its birth in 1971 — after overcoming four years worth of legal challenges from competitors who tried to keep it grounded — Southwest succeeded by a strategy of offering low fares to its passengers, eliminating unnecessary services, and avoiding the "hub-and-spoke" scheduling system used by other airlines in favor of building traffic in such secondary airports as Chicago-Midway (instead of Chicago-O'Hare) and Orange County. During his tenure as CEO of Southwest, Kelleher's colorful personality created a corporate culture which made Southwest employees well known for taking themselves lightly—often singing in-flight announcements to the tune of popular theme songs—but their jobs seriously. How different the company culture is can be seen in an arm-wrestling event in March 199