James W. Keyes

Jim Keyes was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1955. The youngest of six children, he lived with his family in a small country home built by his father and grandfather. It was rustic and had no running water. The well on their property was shared with Keyes's grandparents, who lived next door. Although the house had no heat, it did have electricity and a wood-burning stove.

Keyes describes both of his parents as highly intelligent but under-educated. Keyes's father attended school through the sixth grade, at which time he was forced to quit so that he could help support his large family. He worked as a machine operator in an abrasives factory. Keyes's mother grew up in foster homes and, like her husband, became a factory worker.

When Keyes was five, his parents divorced and let him choose which parent he wanted to live with. But rather than make that decision, he went to live with his older sister for the summer. When school started in the fall, he was forced to choose, so he returned home to live with his father.

Keyes knows now that he was living in poverty, but at the time he had no sense of hardship. His friends from the wealthy side of town enjoyed coming to his house to play. "We saw my place as an adventure and compared it to camping," he says. "It wasn't until I was older that it became more apparent to me that we were poor."

When Keyes was 10, his father was diagnosed with cancer, his widowed grandmother fell ill, and the family's house was condemned. After losing the house, Keyes' father was sent to a veterans hospital, where he died six months later, and Keyes' grandmother was put into a rest home.

Keyes went to live with his mother, who worked two jobs to support them. When he was 15, Keyes began working for McDonald's and became the shift manager within a year. During summers, he did a second shift at night as a truck driver. He took on a third job when he became a church organist. He used his earnings and a small baseball scholarship to attend the College of the Holy Cross, which was close to his home. By that time, his mother had developed cancer, so he decided to live nearby to help care for her.

While in college, Keyes majored in political science and continued to work at McDonald's. A member of the Phi Beta Kappa Honor Society, he graduated in 1977 cum laude. He took a year off to work full time and then entered a business-law program at New York's Columbia University. During his first year in the business program, he served an internship with Gulf Oil, which offered him a job as soon as he finished his MBA.

Gulf assigned Keyes to corporate headquarters in Pittsburgh. He performed well and was steadily promoted. When Gulf merged with Chevron, Keyes joined Citgo Petroleum, which was owned by 7-Eleven (then known as Southland Corp.), and quickly moved up the corporate ladder. In 1996, Keyes was named chief financial officer. He was elected to the board the following year and became chief operating officer in 1998. In 2000, he was named president and CEO of 7-Eleven, Inc.

Keyes read Horatio Alger stories as a child and was humbled and delighted to be recognized by the Association. "It is an incredible honor," he says. "I actually don't see myself as a success, because there is still so much to accomplish and so much life left to live. In fact, I feel that I am just at the beginning of my journey."