Getty Jack Welch pictured with his wife, Suzy, in 2015.
Suzy Welch was Jack Welch’s wife. The couple married in 2004 after first meeting in 2001.
On March 2, 2020, CNBC first reported that Jack Welch had died at the age of 84. The report said that Welch had passed away at his home on the night of March 1, surrounded by his family, including his wife. Suzy, 61, told the network that her husband passed away due to renal failure.
Suzy, who has four children from a previous marriage to Eric Wetlaufer, is a successful business author in her own right. Welch was married twice before his nuptials with Suzy. Between 1959 and 1987, Welch was married to Carolyn B. Osburn and between 1989 and 2003, Welch was married to Jane Beasley.
Suzy’s 2009 book, “10-10-10: A Life Transforming Idea,” was a New York Times bestseller. Suzy co-authored the books “Winning” in 2005 and “The Real-Life MBA” in 2015 with her husband. Suzy is a co-founder of the Jack Welch Management Institute. In addition, Suzy hosts her own show on CNBC, “Get to Work.” On her Twitter page, Suzy jokes in the bio section that she is, “Jack’s wife.”
Here’s what you need to know:
1. Suzy’s Father Was an Architect Who Moved the Family From Town-to-Town in an Attempt to Make it as an Architect Professor
GettyWelch attends the DailyMail.com Answers To Correspondents with Jack & Suzy Welch on April 15, 2015 in New York City.
Suzy was born Suzanne Spring in Portland, Oregon, in 1959, the third of four children. Suzy was raised in New England and New York. She would go on to graduate from Harvard Business School as well as Harvard and Ratcliffe College. Suzy told Boston Magazine in a 2006 feature that her father was an architect who regularly moved the family from town-to-town in a bid to make it as an architecture professor.
GettyWelch and his new wife, Suzy, photographed after their wedding at the Park Street Church in Boston, April 24, 2004. (Photo by Jodi Hilton/Getty Images)
In the same interview, Suzy said that her mother had a PhD from Columbia University and worked as a school administrator. Suzy added that the family was financially stable as her grandfather had made a “small fortune” in real estate. New York Magazine reported in 2002 that Suzy’s grandfather had been a butcher who invested in real estate in New York City during the great depression.
Suzy began her working life as a reporter, first at the Miami Herald where she was on the crime beat. In 1984, Suzy moved to Boston to become a part of the Associated Press’s bureau in the city. In 1985, Suzy married her first husband. The couple had met at Phillips Exeter Academy. From there, Suzy went back to study at Harvard Business School, graduating in the top five percent of her class. Suzy’s first job in finance was with Bain & Company. During her time, Suzy published her first book, a crime thriller named “Judgement Call.” Suzy went back into the media in 1992 when she accepted a role with the Harvard Business Review.
2. Suzy Cites the Work Advice, ‘Be Where You Are,’ as the Best Advice She Ever Received
GettyWelch attends LinkedIn Bring In Your Parents Day 2015 at the Empire State Building on November 5, 2015 in New York City.
Suzy told CNBC in 2019 that while she was working as a reporter and raising four young children, her boss at the time, also a working mother, gave her what she regarded as life-changing advice. Suzy says the advice was, “Be where you are.” Suzy went on, “When I was at the office, my mind was moving the kids from school to play dates. I was texting the babysitter. I was sneaking in a call to the math tutor. When I was home, let’s just say bedtime was an exercise in reading Dr. Seuss out loud while editing stories in my head. Suddenly, I had a radical new discipline — and it is a discipline — of being present in the moment, of living one life at a time, each one fully.”
In a 2018 interview, Suzy was asked what her superpower would be, she replied saying, “It would be the ability to be in more than one place at a time. I’ve got all these kids in different places – if I could just be in two places at the same time.”
3. Suzy Is a Vegan & Was an Early Investor in Beyond Meat
Suzy is a passionate animal rights activist and was one of the early investors into Beyond Meat, the meat-alternative. Suzy maintains a vegan diet. Suzy told Nantucket Magazine in May 2019 about her decision to become vegan saying, “Look, there are all different types of vegans, and I support them all. Some people become plant-based for their health, others for climate change. But for me, it was about my love for animals as part of God’s creation, and my sadness especially for the agonizing existence of farmed animals, which is in such stark contrast to the Biblical imperative for loving dominion. Because of my non-profit work, I came to see all those videos that nobody wants to see – you know, the ones that you see a little bit of and then click away. And at a certain point, I just thought, I can’t walk around claiming I love mercy and compassion and participate in this anymore; I just can’t. So I stopped eating animals.”
According to her LinkedIn page, Suzy is on the Board of Directors of the Humane Society of the United States. One of Suzy’s friends told the Harvard Crimson in 2006 that during her college years, Suzy was on the left, politically speaking. That friend, Paul Barrett, who dated Suzy for a time, said, “[She] was probably, at that time, a little to my left politically. She was definitely someone who was not afraid to get into an argument.”
4. Suzy & Welch Met Each Other When She Was Interviewing Him for the Harvard Business Review
Jack and Suzy Welch visit SiriusXM Business Radio at Wharton Business School April 17, 2015 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Suzy told the Harvard Crimson in June 2006 that she met Welch in October 2001 when she was due to interview him for the Harvard Business Review. Shortly afterward, Suzy and Welch went for lunch, which was the “longest in the history of mankind,” and dinner on the same day. The day after that, Suzy says she told her editor to pull the article she had written on Welch before resigning. Suzy says, “I was fired. They would tell you I resigned. Whatever, I left.”
Jack Welch said of the interview when speaking to Boston Magazine in 2006, “It was the most spectacular, fun interview. We’re one of the few couples in the world who have a tape recording of our first meeting, of our first, ‘Hi. How are you?’ We sat in Nantucket two summers ago and we played it.”
A May 2002 feature in New York Magazine on Suzy and Welch’s relationship alleges that the couple conducted an affair while the former General Electric CEO was married to his second wife. The magazine says that Suzy and Welch were rumbled when the latter’s wife picked up a phone extension and overheard a conversation between the pair. The article says that Welch confessed everything to his wife two months into his relationship with Suzy.
5. Suzy & Jack Welch Would Regularly Read the Bible Together
Suzy says that she and Welch read the Bible together as a demonstration of their shared faith. Suzy told Nantucket Magazine that early in their relationship, Welch asked her to explain her faith to him. Suzy says, “So we started a conversation with each other and our pastor, and we took two years to read the Bible together from the first page to the last. It was a great journey of learning for both of us. Lots and lots of debates and discussions about what it meant. We haven’t stopped talking about it yet.”
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