DETROIT – Henry Ford III, the great-great-grandson of company founder Henry Ford who last month was elected to its board of directors, is leaving his investor relations job within the automaker effective July 1, according to an email sent to colleagues Tuesday.
Ford, 41, will remain on the board but said stepping down as an employee will allow him to “carve out time to further broaden my perspective outside the company” and help him become a better director.
“After 15 years inside Ford, I believe that new external viewpoints will help me guide and support our great company with improved objectivity and an increased ability to constructively critique our strengths and weaknesses,” he wrote.
A spokesman said his investor relations role is being filled internally. Ford didn’t say in the email where his next job would be.
Ford’s roles since joining the company in 2006 have included labor relations, product planning, purchasing, dealer relations and marketing for Ford Performance.
He joined the investor relations team in 2020, the same year he took over the company’s annual Salute to Dealers awards program from his father, Edsel Ford II, whom he replaced on the board in May.
“I have seen the magic that happens when we work together to deliver the products and services that our customers love,” he wrote Tuesday. “Ford is in a position of great strength as we look toward the future, and I am eager to contribute and provide support from the board as you all execute on the Ford+ plan for growth and value creation, and build a highly successful company for all stakeholders.”
After graduating from Dartmouth in 2002 with a bachelor’s degree in English literature, the fifth-generation Ford taught middle and high school math and history, but said he was always drawn to the automaker.
“In the back of my mind, I knew I always wanted to work for Ford,” he told Automotive News in 2014. “Our family’s legacy and heritage are very important to me and I knew it was something I wanted to carry on.”
His first role with the company was in the labor relations department where he helped negotiate a contract with the UAW. The move mirrored his uncle, Executive Chairman Bill Ford, whose first job at the company in 1979 was also with the bargaining team.
On a summer break from working on his MBA at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2008, he sold cars at Galpin Ford in North Hills, Calif.
“Every area we put him in, everyone wanted to keep him,” Beau Boeckmann, then-vice president of Galpin Ford, told Automotive News in 2014. “Every area he touched, people fell in love with him. He is incredibly bright. He is driven but not in an aggressive way.”
