railroading gets in your blood you know you wake up one morning and all of a sudden you're buying railroad toys for your kids and you're filling your house with you know Golden Spike replicas and pictures of the steam engine and you know every time you hear that steam engine whistle go off it just kind of sends shivers down your spine Jack coresi has one of those all-encompassing stories to share it has romance we met in high school we met on the first day of high school and urg to strike out and seek
Adventure we had decided since we were both from Omaha our families are from Omaha and that we were going to get married and move away start a new life together kind of deal I only interviewed with companies outside of Omaha and I had three job offers and I had my best friend's dad who worked at Union Pacific who was just as insistent as heck and I kept thinking oh no no no that's green eye shade and armbands and cigar smoke diesel fumes I'm not doing any of that kind of stuff and then a crucial plot
point an offer he couldn't refuse Wednesday morning I get the phone call from Union Pacific so this is 1972 and my other job offers were Market which was between $675 and $725 a month and Union Pacific offered me 9 and a quarter sold tired of being poor college kids and uh took the money and ran over the next 43 years the story unfolded in Omaha one exciting chapter after the next I spent the first 27 years of my career in finance the last 10 years of that I was the CFO and then did a 13-year stint and thee of marketing and
sales a story of hard work Innovative thinking and an incredible sense of Duty I never hesitated for a moment originally set to retire in 2012 Jack delayed without hesitation assuming the role of president and CEO while Jim young his predecessor and best friend battled and ultimately succumbed to pancreatic cancer this is um one of those truly Bittersweet moments where you have the opportunity of a lifetime but uh a very difficult situation with your best friend during his 3 years of CEO March 2012 to February
2015 Jack LED the great big Roland Railroad and its 48,000 employees to even greater Heights 12 consecutive quarters of record earnings and a more than doubled stock price a story of incredible success Jack credits a terrific team after leaving the CEO's office Jack continued as executive chairman until his retirement in September 2015 the thing I loved the most was getting out on the Railroad and and being with customers and doing those kinds of things one of his proudest professional accomplishments working
with Jim young to fundamentally change the up mindset when I first started we didn't have customers we had shippers and if you wanted to ship on our railroad that was great we ran trains so today the focal point of the company is customers it's not the railroad itself and that transition from being iconic historic steeped in Tradition we've proven that we can change that we can grow that we can generate great returns for shareholders provide solid foundations from our employees Jack was also instrumental in
helping the Fortune 500 create and share its first diversity task force in 1991 yes Jack coresi South Omaha raised a graduate of the University of Nebraska Omaha has an incredible professional story to share but as he settles into retirement that's not the story he wants to put on paper I want to write a book and it's not going to be the history of Union Pacific in this it's going to be just kind of fun it's going to be Dave Berry or maom kind of you see Jack's Christmas letters
have developed quite a following another claim to fame he's written one every year since 1993 but instead of writing a conventional Christmas letter I tell the truth about the family and the stories and working title life is Mone life is also more relaxed now the aspiring author and his beloved Stephanie nationally renowned for her work with cancer survivors plan to enjoy their home in Hawaii do some traveling and soak up their two grandchildren continuing their Community involvements whether it's assisting
Uno's College of Business Heritage services or Omaha Performing Arts that's a given I'm going to continue to do those things and Steph does those as well and we enjoy doing that together our key focus is on education and that's something that's very very important to us and so being involved with the zarbin scholarship program is something that feels really good to us we're pretty invested in an organization called educate Uganda so we like to look at places where we can make a difference
and to maybe help people get a better start to their lives and we think that starts with education for making a difference in our community Through Acumen and altruism with many more chapters to come as advice for for people that want to grow up in a company I would say every chance you get when you build a team try to get people who are smarter than you are and try to get people who are different than you are we welcome Jack coresi to the Omaha business Hall of Fame