Timothy Boyle

Timothy Boyle is CEO of Columbia Sportswear, the company his grandparents started back in 1938. His grandparents fled Nazi Germany, landed in Portland, Oregon, and started Columbia as a hat maker. Although it is a public company today, Columbia remains a family affair. Boyle's 91-year-old mother Gertrude is chairman of the board, and both his son Joe and sister Sarah Bany are on the board. Even the company's security detail, hired after Gertrude survived an attempted kidnapping in 2010, is one of Tim's in-laws. Tim started working at the company after his father passed away, helping his mother Gertrude run the fledgling retailer while he was finishing college. He took over as CEO in 1989. Today he relaxes by bird hunting on Sauvie Island, near Portland -- and stays warm wearing a company Wader Widgeon Parka. Tim's career with Columbia Sportswear began in 1971 when, during his senior year at The University of Oregon, his father, who had been running the company since 1964, died suddenly of a heart attack. Tim's mother, Gert Boyle, quickly enlisted Tim's help in order to continue the aggressive expansion that her husband had initiated and that had expanded the company's sales that year to $1 million. An alumnus of Portland, Oregon's Jesuit High School (1967) and the University of Oregon (1971, B.S. Journalism), Tim serves on the Boards of Directors of Northwest Natural Gas Company and Craft Brew Alliance, Inc.