Jess Sweely's Blog: Notes from Jess Sweely

I grew up in Cherry Tree, a small coal town in Clearfield County, Pennsylvania, in a family shaped by the railroad. Nobody in that town expected a kid from there to end up in the executive suites of some of the country's biggest aerospace and defense companies, or to help build a healthcare company from nothing into one that UnitedHealth Group would later acquire. I didn't expect it either.

I passed my CPA exam in 1964, and from there the path took me through Fairchild-Hiller, General Dynamics, and Kaman Aerospace, three defense contractors that shaped how I understood business at its most demanding level. But the real turning point came in 1988, when I walked away from a stable position to help build something from the ground floor. That decision, and everything that came after it, is the spine of The Journey.

I wrote this book because the parts of my life that get left out of a resume, the setbacks, the years that didn't go as planned, the moments I had to prove I hadn't done anything wrong, are the parts that actually shaped who I became. If you've read The Journey, I'd love to hear what part of it stayed with you.

I grew up in Cherry Tree, a small coal town in Clearfield County, Pennsylvania, in a family shaped by the railroad. Nobody in that town expected a kid from there to end up in the executive suites of some of the country's biggest aerospace and defense companies, or to help build a healthcare company from nothing into one that UnitedHealth Group would later acquire. I didn't expect it either.

I passed my CPA exam in 1964, and from there the path took me through Fairchild-Hiller, General Dynamics, and Kaman Aerospace, three defense contractors that shaped how I understood business at its most demanding level. But the real turning point came in 1988, when I walked away from a stable position to help build something from the ground floor. That decision, and everything that came after it, is the spine of The Journey.

I wrote this book because the parts of my life that get left out of a resume, the setbacks, the years that didn't go as planned, the moments I had to prove I hadn't done anything wrong, are the parts that actually shaped who I became. If you've read The Journey, I'd love to hear what part of it stayed with you.