Early Life, Education, and Business Career
Born in Salt Lake City, Utah, Bennett is the son of Frances Marion (née Grant) and the U.S. Senator Wallace Foster Bennett, as well as a grandson of Heber J. Grant, the seventh president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) and a great-grandson of Jedediah M. Grant (Heber J. Grant's father) and Daniel H. Wells (through Heber J. Grant's wife Emily H. Wells), early mayors of Salt Lake City and counselors in the First Presidency of the LDS Church. Bennett attended high school at East High, and he earned his B.S. from the University of Utah in 1957 majoring in Political Science. He also served as the Student Body President at the University of Utah.
Bennett was an LDS Church chaplain in the Utah Army National Guard from 1957 to 1969, when he entered public service as congressional liaison of the United States Department of Transportation. He held this position from 1969 to 1970. That year he became president of Robert Mullen Company, a Washington, D.C. public-relations company. During Bennett's tenure, the PR firm did work for President Nixon's reelection campaign, and employed future Watergate felon E. Howard Hunt. In 1974, Bennett became the public relations director for the billionaire Howard Hughes's holding company, Summa Corporation, working there until 1978 when he became the president of Osmond Communications.
In 1979, he went into the technology industry, first as the chairman of the American Computers Corporation, and then as the president of the Microsonics Corporation from 1981 to 1984. In 1984, Bennett was named as the CEO of Franklin Quest, where he was also a founding shareholder. Bennett held this position until he ran for public office.
Read more about this topic: Bob Bennett (politician)
Famous quotes containing the words early, business and/or career:
“I looked at my daughters, and my boyhood picture, and appreciated the gift of parenthood, at that moment, more than any other gift I have ever been given. For what person, except one’s own children, would want so deeply and sincerely to have shared your childhood? Who else would think your insignificant and petty life so precious in the living, so rich in its expressiveness, that it would be worth partaking of what you were, to understand what you are?”
—Gerald Early (20th century)
“In business be as able as you can, but do not be cunning; cunning is the dark sanctuary of incapacity.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“What exacerbates the strain in the working class is the absence of money to pay for services they need, economic insecurity, poor daycare, and lack of dignity and boredom in each partner’s job. What exacerbates it in upper-middle class is the instability of paid help and the enormous demands of the career system in which both partners become willing believers. But the tug between traditional and egalitarian models of marriage runs from top to bottom of the class ladder.”
—Arlie Hochschild (20th century)