George Chamillard
George Chamillard describes himself as somewhat of an academic late bloomer. It wasn't until he began putting himself through eight years of night school at Northeastern that he began to excel in his studies. "I was way up there at Northeastern," says Chamillard. "I was getting 3.8s and 3.9s. I found graduate school incredibly stimulating. I just loved it."
In 1969, Chamillard brought the enthusiasm and business acumen he cultivated at Northeastern to his job as an engineer with the Boston-based Teradyne, a leading supplier of automatic testing equipment. At Teradyne, he served in numerous positions, rising to COO in 1996 and CEO in 1997. Currently, he is Teradyne's chairman of the board of directors, a position he's held since May 2000. Ranked first in the Boston Globe's annual list of the state's best businesses in 2001, Teradyne employs more than 4,000 people around the globe and had sales of $1.08 billion in 2005.
Chamillard credits much of Teradyne's success to avoiding "successful company disease" - thinking that the customer's wrong, or the competitors aren't as good.
"That's a dangerous thing," he says. "So we try to have a culture that's continually challenging. We have a style in the company that is very open, straightforward. Everything's on the table; everything's challenged."
