Gordon Richard Thoman (often known as G. Richard Thoman or Rick Thoman) is an American businessman who was President and CEO of Xerox Corporation, and CFO and Senior Vice President of IBM. Early life and education Thoman was born in the U.S. and holds American citizenship. He went to high school in Kingston, Ontario, while his father taught economic geography at Queen's University there. Thoman played basketball, joined the debating team, and got B's in French, straight A's in everything else. Thoman attended McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, where he eventually earned a bachelor of arts in economics and political science, and spent the summer of his junior year working for a bank in Marseille, France. He then completed three advanced degrees from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University—a masters in international studies, a masters in international economics from the Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva and a doctorate in international economics from Tufts. Before joining McKinsey, Thoman worked in finance at Citicorp and Exxon. Career Thoman became a longtime protégé of Louis V. Gerstner, Jr., when they first met at McKinsey & Company, and they subsequently worked together at American Express, RJR Nabisco, and IBM. Thoman and Gerstner were responsible for the remarkable rejuvenation of IBM's fortunes; Thoman was Senior Vice President and general manager of IBM's Personal Systems Group which he led a successful turnaround and was later promoted to Senior Vice President and chief financial officer of IBM. However, as Gerstner had no plans to step aside in the 1990s, and being of a similar age, Thoman had to look outside for opportunities to run a major public company. When Thoman was announced as President and COO of Xerox, which positioned him as the eventual successor to Paul Allaire, this news caused the company shares to rise $2 (2.9%) to $71.75, after earlier touching a record $73.25 on the New York Stock Exchange. Thoman, who assumed his duties on June 30, 1997, was the first outsider in the long history of Xerox to be positioned as the next chief executive. On April 1, 1999 at the company annual meeting, Thoman became CEO while Allaire remained chairman of the board. Allaire had intended to retire but the board convinced him to stay on since Thoman was an outsider. As a nod to CFO Barry D. Romeril and William F. Buehler, who were Allaire loyalists