THIS FOURTH BLOG: "The Vita"

                                              Mr. H. Jeffery Harris, Vita

H. Jeffery Harris is a native Kansan, Alumnus of the University of Kansas, and the Jayhawk Football Program of ’65-‘67. Harris began his professional career as a Social Advocacy Planner in Kansas City, Missouri, and after migrating to Oakland, California, for a career with the Xerox Corporation Harris began what some score as a stellar business career.

With Xerox Corporation, Harris held numerous management positions. In Dallas, Texas home of the Xerox Office Products Division, Harris served as the Director of Strategic Planning and Operations. This Market Development Group pioneered the Information Technology movement within the office, through the development and introduction of the Xerox Personal Computer. With senior management responsibility for strategic planning, engineering, finance and marketing support, Harris helped lead the most successful product launch in the history of the office products industry up to that time – a product introduction taking in over 150 million dollars in orders during the first sixty days alone. As he is fond of saying, “Information Technology began at Xerox not at IBM; we beat them by six months! It took opportunity, timing and most of all leadership. As a group we led a marvelous and historic effort.”

After a decade long tenure with Xerox, Harris along with his partners started HARAH, Inc., a distributor and retailer of all major Personal Computer brands. As Vice President of Ericsson of Sweden, Harris helped to introduce this worldwide provider of IT Systems to the USA market. Harris later orchestrated the leveraged buyout of BG Aero Structures, a Wichita, Kansas based aircraft parts manufacturer. By this acquisition, BGA became the largest manufacturing company of its type in the world – in equipment assets, employees, and the amount of acreage under roof, owned and operated by an African American businessman. Harris is the only African American in the United States, to have owned and operated a Business Journal newspaper. With 25 journalists and staff the East Bay Business Journal of Oakland, California, was launched in October 1996.

Harris has a true affinity for entrepreneurship, having owned companies in manufacturing, wholesale distribution, computer retailing, food service franchising, computer service, publishing and mergers and acquisitions. As a Transformation Strategist, Harris has aided numerous entrepreneurs and minority firms in change discovery, and in the execution of organization development and operational strategies; re-positioning firms for continued growth. Over the years Harris has taught fundamental business leadership principles and strategic business planning in seminars, created or assisted in developing volumes of business plans, and facilitated in the Disparity Studies leadership process. Harris is member emeritus of the Turnaround Management Association.

The passion for business is only exceeded by the zeal that Harris has to better the lives of children through education reform and he has participated in writing numerous Charter School proposals and in the development of Charter Schools. His reform activities in California and speeches on the topic of education reform focus on student personal accountability through a process of self-discovery, via his A Meaningful Life Curriculum and strategies for personal growth. He is an advocating voice for a Debt-less Education, if America is to maintain a global advantage.

Harris has five children: A Stanford University Masters graduate son, a genius son engaged in discovery, a Parsons School of Design graduate daughter, a daughter and junior attending Eugene Lang College – The New School for Liberal Arts; as well as a daughter and freshman attending Metropolitan State University-Denver. An ordained minister and motivational speaker, Harris is author of “Become Perfect” a call for spiritual reformation in the Church of America.