Carlos Gutierrez

Carlos Miguel Gutierrez (originally Gutiérrez; born November 4, 1953) is an American former CEO and former United States Secretary of Commerce. He is currently a co-founder and executive chairman of EmPath. Gutierrez is a former chairman of the board and CEO of the Kellogg Company. He served as the 35th U.S. Secretary of Commerce from 2005 to 2009.

Gutierrez is of Spanish descent. He was born in Havana, Cuba, the son of a pineapple plantation owner. As a successful businessman, his father was deemed an enemy of the state by Fidel Castro's regime. Faced with the expropriation of their property following the Cuban Revolution, Gutierrez's family fled for the United States in 1960, when he was six years old, settling in Miami.

When it became apparent they would not be returning to Cuba, Gutierrez's father accepted a position with the H. J. Heinz Company in Mexico and later started his own business. Gutierrez learned his first words of English from the bellhop at the hotel where they initially stayed and, some years later, he and his family acquired United States citizenship.

Gutierrez studied business administration at the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education campus in Querétaro but never received a degree, making him the most recent U.S. Cabinet member without a college degree.

Gutierrez joined Kellogg's in Mexico in 1975, at the age of 22, as a sales representative and management trainee. One of his early assignments was driving a delivery-truck route around local stores.

Gutierrez rose through the management ranks. In January 1990 he was promoted to corporate vice president of product development at the company's headquarters in Battle Creek, Michigan, and in July of that year, he became executive vice president of Kellogg USA. In January 1999, he was elected to the company's board of directors. In April he was appointed president and CEO, succeeding Arnold G. Langbo, becoming the only Latino CEO of a Fortune 500 company. Gutierrez was also the youngest CEO in the company's nearly 100-year history.

In 1999, Kellogg faced a global decline or stagnation in cereal sales. Gutierrez's strategy, known as "Volume to Value," was to increase sales by focusing resources on higher-margin products. Higher-margin products targeted specific markets and included products such as Special K, Kashi, and Nutri-Grain bars. Extra income would fund advertising, promotions, and R&D, which would encourage further high-margin sales growth. "Volume is a means to an end--not an end," he said. "What counts is dollars."

In September 2004, Fortune Magazine dubbed Gutierrez as "The Man Who Fixed Kellogg", and attributed his success to "taking the slick salesmanship, financial discipline, and marketing savvy that he learned in his youth and blending it with disarming charisma, steely resolve, and an utter lack of pretension that you wouldn't expect in one so nattily dressed." The magazine also added that, "He even makes golf shirts look debonair."