George H.W. Bush Lifetime of Leadership Award
Henry B. Schacht, ‘56, has been a corporate industry leader for over a half century. A swimmer at Yale, he served in the U.S. Navy before earning an M.B.A. from Harvard in 1962. After a period at the investment firm Irwin Management Company, he joined Cummins Engine Company, Inc. as vice president of finance in 1964; in 1969 he became the firm’s president. He would later become president and CEO, then chairman and CEO before retiring from Cummins in 1995.
In that same year, Mr. Schact was named the first chairman and CEO of Lucent Technologies. He served in various capacities with Lucent and a spinoff, Avaya, returning as chairman and/or CEO from 2000 to 2003. He is a managing director and senior advisor for Warburg Pincus LLC, a world-wide private equity investment firm.
Schacht has served on the boards of directors of Alcoa, AT&T, CBS, Chase Manhattan Bank, Johnson & Johnson, and the New York Times. He was a trustee then chaired the Ford Foundation for eight years and has been a trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation. A former member of the Business Council and Business Roundtable, Henry served as a member of the Yale corporation from 1988-2000.
