| 1 | Name: | Mr. David T. Kearns | |
| Institution: | Xerox Corporation | ||
| Year Elected: | 1990 | ||
| Class: | 5. The Arts, Professions, and Leaders in Public & Private Affairs | ||
| Subdivision: | 503. Administrators, Bankers and Opinion Leaders from the Public or Private Sectors | ||
| Residency: | Resident | ||
| Living? : | Deceased | ||
| Birth Date: | 1930 | ||
| Death Date: | February 25, 2011 | ||
David Todd Kearns was the retired chairman and chief executive officer of the Xerox Corporation. After receiving his B.S. from the University of Rochester in 1952, he worked for 17 years in the data processing division and as a sales representative for IBM Corporation before joining Xerox as group vice president in 1975. He assumed the titles of president and CEO in 1982 and succeeded in bringing the corporation from a very poor state to an extremely successful one. He retired as CEO eight years later, staying on as chairman until 1992, when he was named Deputy Secretary of Education to the Bush Administration. The author (with Dennis Doyle) of Winning the Brain Race: A Bold Plan to Make Our Schools Competitive (1988), Mr. Kearns devoted significant energies to the problem of public education in America. He co-authored "America 2000," a blueprint for lifting the nation's high school graduation rate and attaining global superiority in math and science, and organized New American Schools, a nongovernmental agency funded by corporations that would work outside the education establishment to select and promote models of reform. Mr. Kearns also served for many years as chairman of the board of the University of Rochester and Duke University Business School. He died February 25, 2011, at the age of 80, in Vero Beach, Florida. | |||