Bill George was chief executive of Medtronic, the world's leading medical technology company, from 1991 until 2001 and chairman of the board from 1996 to 2002. Under his leadership, Medtronic's market capitalization grew from $1.1 billion to $60 billion, averaging 35 percent a year. Currently, he is professor of management practice at Harvard Business School and serves on the board of directors of ExxonMobil, Goldman Sachs, and Novartis. He has also served on the board of Target Corporation.

He is the author of best-selling books Authentic Leadership: Rediscovering the Secrets of Creating Lasting Value (Jossey-Bass, 2003) and True North, Discover Your Authentic Leadership (Joseey-Bass, 2007). He has made frequent appearances on television and radio, including The Today Show, The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, CNBC, Bloomberg News, and public radio. His articles have appeared in Fortune, the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, and numerous other publications.

He has been named one of "Top 25 Business Leaders of the Past 25 Years" by PBS; "Executive of the Year-2001" by the Academy of Management; and "Director of the Year-2001-02" by the National Association of Corporate Directors. He is currently a trustee of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and World Economic Forum USA, and has been board chair of Allina Health System, Abbott-Northwestern Hospital, United Way of Greater Twin Cities, and Advamed.

Earlier in his career, he was an executive with Honeywell and Litton Industries and served in the U.S. Department of Defense. He has been executive-in-residence at Yale School of Management. He received his BS in industrial engineering from Georgia Tech and MBA from Harvard University, where he was a Baker Scholar, and an honorary doctorate from Bryant University.

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