Gary Garfield

Gary Garfield is a speaker, consultant, and author in the areas of leadership, culture, change management and social responsibility. He has been a guest lecturer at Yale, Wharton, Vanderbilt, West Point, Ohio State, and several other institutions, companies and associations.

In 2010, Garfield was promoted from General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer to CEO of Bridgestone Americas, an $10 billion company with 55,000 employees world-wide. The company had been struggling with unsatisfactory results for years. Garfield made major cultural, strategic, and organizational changes to the company resulting in record profits every year of his tenure, a 500 percent improvement in profitability in six years, and a 40% growth in revenues. He speaks from a position of experience on the fundamentals of successful leadership, driving growth, transformational cultural change, and corporate social responsibility.

A New York publisher, Wiley & Sons, commissioned Garfield to write a book on the company’s remarkable success. His book, entitled "Driving Results: Six Lessons Learned from Transforming an Iconic Company," has received rave reviews.

Garfield retired from Bridgestone at the end of 2016. In addition to speaking and consulting, Garfield has been an occasional opinion contributor to the Hill and has also published several opinion editorials in other publications. He also speaks on and is involved in several issues related to our climate crisis, including being a panelist on business and climate change at an event sponsored by the Tennessee World Affairs Council as a prelude to the 2020 Presidential debate in Nashville.

In addition to his work at Bridgestone, Garfield served on the Board of Directors of Piedmont Natural Gas, Inc., a NYSE company, as well as an extensive list of civic and charitable organizations. Currently, Garfield is an Advisor to Belmont University’s Center for International Business and a Trustee for the Nashville Law School.

Garfield received his Bachelor of Arts degree with honors in both Philosophy and Political Science from Wittenberg University and his Juris Doctor with honors from the University of Cincinnati College of Law, where he also served as an editor of the Law Review.