Herb Kelleher was the co-founder, Chairman Emeritus, and former CEO of Southwest Airlines. Herb Kelleher had a net worth of $2.5 billion dollars at the time of his death in January 2019. Herb Kelleher was born March 12, 1931 in Camden, New Jersey. He was raised in Audubon, New Jersey, where he graduated from Haddon Heights High School.
He earned a bachelor’s degree from Wesleyan University where he was an Olin Scholar and a member of the Delta Kappa Upsilon fraternity, and a Juris Doctor from New York University. After law school he moved to Texas intending to start a law firm or a business. Kelleher and one of his law clients, Texas businessman Rollin King, created the concept that later became Southwest Airlines on a cocktail napkin in a San Antonio, Texas restaurant in 1967. Southwest succeeded by daring to be different, offering low fares to its passengers by eliminating unnecessary services and avoiding the “hub-and-spoke” scheduling system used by other airlines in favor of building traffic in such secondary airports as Albany, Chicago-Midway, and Orange County. During his tenure as CEO of Southwest, Kelleher’s colorful personality created a corporate culture which made Southwest employees well known for taking themselves lightly-often singing in-flight announcements to the tune of popular theme songs-but their jobs seriously. Southwest is consistently named among the top five Most Admired Corporations in America. Herb Kelleher died on January 3, 2019 at the age of 87.
| Net Worth: | $2.5 Billion |
| Date of Birth: | Mar 12, 1931 (91 years old) |
| Gender: | Male |
| Profession: | Lawyer, Businessperson |
| Nationality: | United States of America |