Bill Haslam

William Edward Haslam (born August 23, 1958) is an American billionaire businessman and politician who served as the 49th governor of Tennessee from 2011 to 2019.

Haslam was born in 1958 in Knoxville, Tennessee, the third child of Jim Haslam, the founder of Pilot Corporation, the parent company of the convenience store and travel center chain, Pilot Flying J, and his wife, Cynthia (Allen).

Jim Haslam has been a Republican Party fundraiser and University of Tennessee donor and trustee for several decades.

Haslam was educated at the Webb School of Knoxville, where he became active in the Christian group Young Life.

A member of the Republican Party, Haslam previously served as the 67th mayor of Knoxville, Tennessee.

He was born in Knoxville and graduated from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.

He began his career in business, joining his father, Jim Haslam, who was the founder of Pilot Corporation.

He later attended Emory University, graduating with a bachelor's degree in history in 1980.

He is a member of the Beta Chi chapter of the Sigma Chi International Fraternity.

As a teenager, Haslam began working part-time in his father's corporation.

He had made plans to teach history and eventually become a minister.

Following his university graduation, he returned to Knoxville to work for Pilot in hopes of learning more about the business world before entering the seminary, and eventually decided to stay with the company.

Haslam rose to president of Pilot Corp in the 1990s, after his brother Jimmy Haslam became the company's CEO.

He was elevated to president of the company (with his brother, Jimmy, as CEO, and father as chairman) in 1995.

Haslam then left Pilot and from 1999 to 2001 was the CEO of the e-commerce and cataloging division at the department store chain Saks Fifth Avenue.

He then became a consultant at Saks and later served on the board of directors at Harold's Stores, Inc.

He is a co-owner of a minor league baseball team, the Tennessee Smokies, and is set to become majority owner of the National Hockey League's Nashville Predators by 2025.

In 1999, Haslam joined Saks Fifth Avenue as the chief executive officer of the e-commerce and catalog division.

He left Saks in 2001, and joined the board of the Dallas-based clothing chain, Harold's Stores Inc., later that year.

Haslam is one of the owners of the Tennessee Smokies, a minor league baseball team in East Tennessee.

In 2002, Haslam announced he was running for Mayor of Knoxville, inspired in part by a conversation he had had with then-Chattanooga mayor (and later United States Senator) Bob Corker.

Knoxville's mayoral elections are nominally non-partisan, but Haslam was known to be a member of the Republican Party when he ran for the office.

His opponent in the race, Knox County commissioner Madeline Rogero, criticized Haslam as an oil company puppet, and blamed his father for the appointment of controversial University of Tennessee president John Shumaker, an attack Haslam dismissed as "petty, personal politics".

He was elected Mayor of Knoxville, Tennessee in the 2003 Knoxville mayoral election with 52% of the vote.

On September 30, 2003, he defeated Rogero by a 52% to 46% margin.

He was sworn in in December 2003.

In 2006, Haslam appointed Rogero director of community development, later stating he had read Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals, and was inspired by President Abraham Lincoln's decision to appoint former campaign rivals to his cabinet.

He was reelected in the 2007 Knoxville mayoral election, winning 87% of the vote, and served until 2011.

He was reelected in 2007, winning 87% of the vote against challengers Isa Infante and Mark Saroff.

Haslam identifies several successful historic preservation initiatives among his accomplishments as mayor, including saving the historic S&W Cafeteria in downtown Knoxville, building a new cinema (the Regal Riviera) in the city's downtown, and revitalizing the historic Bijou Theatre.

In 2008, he was appointed to a four-year term on the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation by U.S. President George W. Bush.

Along with historical preservation efforts, Haslam helped spur residential and retail growth in the downtown area, mainly by offering developers tax subsidies.

He helped implement a master plan for the development of the South Knoxville riverfront, which was given an Outstanding Planning Award by the Tennessee Chapter of the American Planning Association.

The Haslam administration operated under a balanced budget policy, which helped to double the city's savings during his first term.

After incumbent Governor Phil Bredesen was term-limited, Haslam declared his candidacy for the office in January 2009.

He defeated U.S. Representative Zach Wamp and Lieutenant Governor Ron Ramsey in the Republican primary with 47% of the vote and went on to defeat Democratic businessman Mike McWherter with 65% of the vote in the 2010 general election.

His brother, current Pilot Flying J CEO Jimmy Haslam, became majority owner of the Cleveland Browns in 2012.

A 2015 Forbes article estimated Haslam's net worth at $2 billion, making him the nation's wealthiest elected official at that time.

He was the wealthiest state governor in America, until Democrat J. B. Pritzker of Illinois took office in January 2019.

In the fall of 2019, Haslam became a visiting professor of political science at Vanderbilt University.