Charles Elvan Cobb, Jr. (born May 9, 1936) is an American businessman. He is currently the chief executive officer and senior managing director of Cobb Partners, Ltd., an investment firm.[ citation needed ] He was the chairman and chief executive officer of Arvida Corporation [1] [2] and Disney Development Company during the 1970s and 1980s. Arvida was a public company and then a subsidiary of Penn Central Transportation Company and later of The Walt Disney Company. [3]
He has also served as a member of the Walt Disney board of directors and the executive committee of the Disney board. Prior to this, he was the chief operating officer and a director of Penn Central Transportation Corporation, a multi-industry company that had approximately 40,000 employees. He led a leveraged buy-out of Arvida Corporation from Penn Central [4] with the Bass family in Texas and subsequently merged Arvida with Walt Disney. Earlier, he was an investment manager with Dodge & Cox and the chief executive officer of subsidiaries at Kaiser Aluminum.
Cobb was the United States Ambassador to Iceland during the George H. W. Bush administration. [5] Cobb received the Order of the Falcon from the Iceland (Iceland’s highest honor to a non-Icelandic citizen). During the Reagan Administration, he served as under secretary and assistant secretary at the United States Department of Commerce. In the 1950s he served as an officer in the United States Navy. Florida Governors, Jeb Bush and Charlie Crist, appointed Cobb as chairman of Florida FTAA [6] and Gateway Florida, which have the responsibility for Florida’s international trade agenda. Cobb created the Charles E. Cobb Jr. Award for Initiative and Success in Trade Development within the U.S. Department of State that is awarded annually to the career ambassador who best leads U.S. trade policy.
In his 40 years as the CEO of Arvida Corporation, Disney Development, Kaiser Community Development, and Cobb Partners, Cobb has had the responsibility for the development of more than 30 new towns and master-planned communities.
Cobb was educated at Stanford University where he received his BA and MBA. He is the past chairman of the Board of Trustees of the University of Miami, [7] having been the chairman, vice chairman or past chairman of the trustees for over 35 years. He is a former trustee of the Stanford Business School Trust Fund, a member of the Advisory Council for the Stanford Business School, and the past president of two Stanford alumni organizations. He was the chairman of the Board of the Florida Business/Higher Education Partnership, the co-founder and trustee of the Barry University Charter School, a director of the South Florida Annenberg Challenge, a director of the Council for Educational Change and a former member of the Florida Governor’s Commission on Education.
Cobb has served on the Boards of nine publicly traded corporations (Arvida, Penn Central, Walt Disney, LNR Property Corporation, WCI Communities, Ameritas, Pan Am Corporation, CLC of America, and Southeast Banking) and many private corporate boards (Florida Savings, Kirkwood Mountain Resort, Durango Mountain Resort, Telluride Resort, Tubac Resort, and Observer Media Group). [8] Cobb has been an officer and/or member of the Executive Committee of The Florida Council of 100 (Chairman 2000–2002), Florida Chamber of Commerce, the South Florida Coordinating Council, the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce and several other economic development organizations. Cobb also serves on the Board and the Investment Committee for the Florida State Board of Administration, University of Miami, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Eisenhower Fellowships, [9] Orange Bowl Committee, Council of American Ambassadors [10] and Cobb Family Foundation. He was the co-chairman of the committee that secured $9 billion of federal funds for South Florida after Hurricane Andrew. Other civic boards and memberships include Plymouth Congregational Church, The American-Scandinavian Foundation, the Icelandic-American Chamber of Commerce, Orange Bowl Committee, Council on Foreign Relations, the Urban Land Institute, and the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.
Cobb has been married since 1959 to Sue M. Cobb, former U.S. Ambassador to Jamaica and Secretary of State of Florida. She is a lawyer, sportswoman, and author who chronicled her 1988 attempt to be the first American woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest with a book entitled The Edge of Everest. They have two sons, Christian (architect and Harvard MBA) and Tobin (investment banker and NYU MBA), and seven grandchildren.
Donn B. Tatum was an American businessman and the first non-Disney family member to be an executive of Walt Disney Productions. Tatum held senior leadership positions with Disney for 25 years, becoming president from 1968 to 1971, when he became CEO from 1971 until 1980. His final position was "Director Emeritus" from 1992 until his death. He played a major role in the creation of Walt Disney World Resort, EPCOT Center and Tokyo Disneyland.
Allen R. "Al" Weiss (1954) is an American businessman who served as President of Worldwide Operations for Disney Parks, Experiences and Products, a division of The Walt Disney Company.
James A. "Jay" Rasulo is an American executive who was the Senior Executive VP and CFO of The Walt Disney Company.
Philip Lader, is a former US Ambassador to the Court of St. James’s and former chairman of WPP plc, the global advertising/communications services firm.
John Edgar Bryson is an American lawyer who was United States Secretary of Commerce from 2011 to 2012, the 37th person to hold the post since its establishment in 1913. Prior to this, he served as the chairman, chief executive officer and president of Edison International, the parent company of Southern California Edison and as director of The Boeing Company. He co-founded the Natural Resources Defense Council with fellow Yale alumni in 1970.
John E. Pepper Jr. is an American businessman. He served as chief executive officer and/or chairman of Procter & Gamble from 1995 to 2002. He was also CEO of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, and until 2012 served as the chairman of the board of The Walt Disney Company.
Meg Gilbert Crofton is an American businesswoman, who served as president of Walt Disney Parks & Resorts in the United States and France. She was named to the position on August 7, 2006, replacing Al Weiss, who had been promoted to president of worldwide operations for Walt Disney Parks and Resorts in November 2005.
Thomas Owen Staggs is an American business executive and investor. He is currently one of the co-founders and co-CEOs of Candle Media. He formerly worked at The Walt Disney Company for nearly 27 years, beginning in 1990, working in finance and later becoming the chief financial officer (CFO), then as chairman of Walt Disney Parks and Resorts Worldwide and finally as chief operating officer (COO). He also holds directorships on various company boards, including Spotify.
Charles Edgar Haldeman, Jr. was the chief executive officer of the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, known as Freddie Mac, a publicly traded company that is the second largest source of mortgage financing in the United States. On October 26, 2011, it was announced that Haldeman would retire, but he agreed to stay until a successor was found. Haldeman left Freddie Mac in May 2012. He is the former President, CEO, and chairman of the board of directors, of Putnam Investments, a mutual fund company based in Boston, Massachusetts. He served on the Board of Trustees of Dartmouth College from 2004 to 2012.
Paul L. Cejas is a Cuban-born American businessman and former diplomat.
Matthew E. Rubel is an American entrepreneur and investor. He is the former chairman, chief executive officer, and president of Collective Brands, Inc., the parent company for Payless ShoeSource, a footwear, accessory, and lifestyle brand company, Collective Brands' Performance + Lifestyles Group, and Collective Licensing International.
Sue McCourt Cobb, O.J. served as Secretary of State of Florida from 2005 to 2007 and held the position of United States Ambassador to Jamaica from 2001 to 2005. She was the first woman to be appointed to that position. She has served as Managing Director and General Counsel for Cobb Partners Inc., a private investment, venture capital, real estate and resort development company in Coral Gables, Florida. Cobb previously served on the Board of Directors of BankUnited.
M. Anthony Burns is an American businessman and chairman emeritus of the board of directors of Ryder, a United States-based provider of transportation and supply chain management products.
John S. Chen is a Hong Kong-American businessman who served as executive chairman and chief executive officer of BlackBerry Ltd. Previously, he served as the chief executive officer and president of Sybase, a software vendor specializing in data management, analytics and mobility technology.
Dennis Fowler Hightower, is a former United States Army officer, retired business executive, college educator, and public servant who was the United States Deputy Secretary of Commerce from August 11, 2009 to August 27, 2010.
Peter Stevenson Rummell is an American real estate entrepreneur, investor and businessman. He has held senior positions at several prominent companies, heading two branches of The Walt Disney Company and serving as CEO of the St. Joe Company. Disney's planned community of Celebration, Florida was his brainchild. He is a founding board member and the primary financial backer of One Spark, a crowdfunding festival in Jacksonville, Florida.
Thomas I. Barkin is an American central banker, who became the eighth president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond on January 1, 2018. He worked at global management consulting firm McKinsey & Company for 30 years in increasingly senior positions, including as global chief financial officer (CFO) and chief risk officer, with oversight of finance, legal and information technology functions, among others. He also served on the executive committee of the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, as an Emory University Board of Trustees member, and former board member and chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.