E Stanley O'Neal

Born in 1951 in Roanoke, Ala., E. Stanley O'Neal spent his early childhood delivering newspapers, and picking cotton and corn on the family farm. He was educated in a one-room school built by his grandfather, a former slave. When he was 13, his father landed a job at General Motors in Atlanta and O'Neal's life changed. He soon earned a place studying engineering and industrial administration at the General Motors Institute. He briefly worked as a foreman on a GM assembly line in Flint, Mich. Later, O'Neal received a master's of business administration with distinction in Finance from Harvard University and is a graduate of Kettering University (formerly General Motors Institute). In 1986, he joined Merrill Lynch's junk-bond division. From then on, his career moved in one direction: up. By the early 1990s, he was running Merrill's leveraged finance division. In 1998 he was promoted to chief financial officer, In 2002, he was promoted to chairman and chief executive officer, becoming the first African-American to run a major Wall Street firm.