BusinessTN

As early as age 7, in the small town of Biberach, Germany, Tom Schmitt listened to Casey Kasem's American Top 40 every Sunday on Armed Forces Radio. Kasem's signature sign-off--"Keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars"--stuck with the young German. But it wasn't just Kasem's parting slogan that resonated with Schmitt.

"Somehow, I thought this American thing sounded interesting," Schmitt says, in a noticeable German accent. "Whether the music sounded upbeat and the German music sounded more suicidal, or whether the movies tended to have more uplifting scenes and can-do attitudes behind them, on average, this just happened to be something intriguing."

Since then, Schmitt, now 43, president and CEO of FedEx Global Supply Chain Services, senior vice president of FedEx Solutions, and chairman of the board for the Greater Memphis Chamber of Commerce, has leveraged that early attraction to the American spirit into a leadership style that's benefiting FedEx, Memphis and, ultimately, the state of Tennessee.

The Start of Something Fed

Though Schmitt didn't act on his desire to experience America until after he graduated from London's Middlesex University, he took his first big step when he accepted a full-time job in London with British Petroleum on the condition that he'd be able to work in the United States in the near future. A few months later, BP reassigned him to Cleveland, Ohio, where he managed several gas stations. After a brief return to Germany, Schmitt later resumed his American experience (along with his then-girlfriend, now wife, Petra) at what he calls the "American name brand" of business schools--Harvard. But it was while working in Atlanta for management consulting firm McKinsey & Co., primarily in the transportation sector, that he got the call that launched his career in the place he now calls home.

Under FedEx founder and CEO Fred Smith's direction, FedEx was recruiting transportation talent, and Schmitt was one of the company's finds. At the time, on paper, Schmitt says he had what others construed as "more appealing options." Today, though, he doubts anyone would second-guess his acceptance of a position at what naysayers 10 years ago referred to as "some transportation outfit in Memphis, Tenn."

Indeed, in 1998, when Schmitt joined FedEx as vice president of sales and development for the company's logistics and electronic commerce division, the purple and orange airline that flew letters and parcels around the world was on the brink of becoming something more. And interestingly enough, that transition lined up nicely with Schmitt's quick ascension up the FedEx corporate ladder--a fact that he initially describes as getting "lucky" but later frames, in CEO-speak true to his nature, as "when preparedness meets opportunity."