Welch worked in chemical engineering at Sunoco and PPG Industries during his college summers.
Late in his senior year, Welch was accepted to University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he studied chemical engineering. Welch attended Salem High School, where he participated in baseball, football, and captained the hockey team and became second lieutenant right after graduating. Throughout his early life in middle school and high school, Welch found work in the summers as a golf caddie, newspaper delivery boy, shoe salesman, and drill press operator. His paternal and maternal grandparents were Irish. Jack Welch was born in Peabody, Massachusetts, the only child of Grace (Andrews), a homemaker, and John Francis Welch Sr., a Boston & Maine Railroad conductor. In 2006, Welch's net worth was estimated at $720 million. When Welch retired from GE, he received a severance payment of $417 million, the largest such payment in business history up to that point. He was Chairman and CEO of General Electric (GE) between 19. (November 19, 1935 – March 1, 2020) was an American business executive.
