Iger started his entertainment career in 1974 as a studio supervisor at ABC and rose through the ranks to become CEO of one of the most powerful businesses in the world. Iger recounted this journey in his memoir The Ride of a Lifetime, released in September 2019, in which he chronicled how he went from making US$150 a week doing “menial labour” on ABC shows to earning over US$60 million a year running The Walt Disney Company. 

Since Iger became CEO on October 1, 2005, the company’s stock has risen 492 per cent. But after 45 years in the entertainment industry, Iger has also amassed a sizeable personal fortune. 

Forbes reported that Iger has a net worth of US$690 million. Iger was compensated US$65.6 million in 2018 – which Forbes notes is 1,424 times what the average Disney employee makes.

Here’s what we know about Iger’s life and rise.

On December 3, 2019, the Television Academy announced that Iger would be inducted into the Hall of Fame the following month. He was also named Time’s business-person of the year for 2019.

“In a year when the tide has shifted against big business, big media and big tech, Iger has transformed his enormous media company into a gargantuan media and tech business while ensuring that Walt Disney’s products remain widely beloved,” Belinda Luscombe wrote in Time’s profile of him. “He’s transformed his company from a stuffy media doyen into a sexy cultural force.”

Iger was born in Brooklyn, New York, and raised in the small town of Oceanside, New York.

“I am very lucky,” Iger told Laurene Powell Jobs at The Atlantic Festival in Washington in September. “I was a lower-middle-class kid or middle class. I started as a US$150-a-week employee at ABC 45 years ago and rose up to be CEO of this company. It is a great story, but it is not necessarily because I was extraordinary.”

He attended Ithaca College where he graduated magna cum laude in 1973 with a degree in television and radio.

At Ithaca College, Iger hosted a campus television show called Campus Probe. He graduated, wanting to be a news anchor, and briefly worked as a local weatherman in Ithaca, New York. But he quickly realised that being a news anchor was not going to work out for him.

In 1974, Iger joined ABC, working in New York City. He wrote in his memoir that he did “menial labour” for basically every show ABC produced out of Manhattan at the time.

Iger wrote in his book that he got his first job at ABC because of his uncle, who was in hospital for eye surgery. His uncle was in the room next to someone who claimed to be a top executive at ABC, who said he would give the younger Iger a job.

Iger took the “top executive” up on his offer, though he soon realised that the person was a lower-level executive. Still, the person ran a small department at ABC known as production services and was able to secure Iger an interview.

At age 23, Iger was brought on as a “studio supervisor”. But after a confrontation with his boss, Iger was almost fired and forced to look for a new job. Soon after, he moved over to ABC Sports.

One of Iger’s bosses accused him of spreading rumours about the man, Iger recalled at the UCLA Awards Gala in 2013, “when I knew the rumours happened to be based in fact. He told me I wasn't promotable and I had two weeks to find another job somewhere in the company or I was gone. Fortunately, I was able to find another job.”

He worked his way up the ABC Sports ladder, working closely with Roone Arledge, “a relentless perfectionist, who was the head of ABC Sports at the time.

Iger wrote in his book that Arledge taught him the “innovate or die” mantra which would follow him for the rest of his life.

Iger went on to become the vice-president of ABC Sports. ABC was later sold to Capital Cities Communications for US$3.5 billion, in a deal finalised in 1986.

Soon after, Tom Murphy and Dan Burke – the heads of Capital Cities/ABC – tapped Iger to become the head of ABC Entertainment, and Iger moved to Los Angeles, California.

Iger wrote in his memoir that the constant travelling put a strain on his first marriage, to Kathleen Susan. Eventually, the two divorced. They have two daughters.

While at the helm of ABC Entertainment, Iger aired David Lynch’s Twin Peaks. The critically-acclaimed series was cancelled after two seasons, but Iger said the risk he took putting it on television caught the attention of other famed directors such as Steven Spielberg and George Lucas.

Iger and Lucas then developed a show based on the Indiana Jones franchise, which was cancelled after two seasons. But, Iger wrote in his book, Lucas never forgot the risk Iger took on his show, and he remembered it years later when he decided to sell Lucasfilm to Disney.

In 1993, Iger became president of ABC Network’s Television Group. When Burke retired, Iger was tapped to replace him as president and chief operating officer of Capital Cities/ABC.

In 1995, Iger married journalist Willow Bay who, at the time, was a stand-in weekend news anchor on Good Morning America, and was poised to take over for then-full time host Joan Lunden.

Iger and Bay got engaged in 1995. After Disney agreed to buy Capital Cities/ABC that year, Iger, who had been commuting weekly to Los Angeles, knew there would be little time to honeymoon once the acquisition was approved. So, they quickly married later that year.

They are still married, living in Brentwood, California, and have two children together.

In 1996, The Walt Disney Company bought Capital Cities/ABC for US$19 billion, and renamed it ABC, Inc.

Iger considered walking away from Disney at this point. But as part of the Disney-ABC merger, Iger agreed to run a media division at Disney for five years.

In 1999, Iger became the president of Disney International, the business division overseeing Disney's global operations. A year later, he was tapped to become the chief operating officer of Disney, working directly under then-CEO Michael Eisner.

Forbes reported that from 1994 to 1999, Eisner made US$631 million. In 1997 alone, Eisner reportedly made more than US$550 million. Over the years, Eisner invested his Disney money and became a billionaire by 2008 – perhaps predicting the financial path Iger was on his way to following.

In the early 2000s, tensions began to brew between Eisner and Roy E. Disney, the heir of Disney. After Eisner stepped down, Iger became the CEO of the Walt Disney Company in 2005.

Iger wrote in his book that, despite being the COO and thereby second in command behind Eisner, his promotion to CEO was not a guarantee. If anything, he wrote, many had associated him with the turbulence of Eisner's era and wanted an outsider for the job. Iger said he campaigned for months until he was officially named CEO in 2005.

Forbes reported in 2019 that in his first year as CEO, Iger made US$22 million, a salary which did not include stock options worth US$2.9 million.

One of Iger's first major moves as CEO was to rebuild Disney’s relationship with Pixar. The relationship between Disney and Pixar was strained, and Iger felt the future of Disney Animation relied on repairing it.

Before he officially became the CEO of Disney, he called to let Steve Jobs – who was the majority shareholder in Pixar – know he was being appointed CEO and shared his hope they could discuss working together in the future. From there, the two began to work on repairing the fraught relationship between the two companies.

Iger wrote in his memoir that he felt Disney needed Pixar to help enter the future of animation. Pixar at the time was using technologies to produce content that had never been seen before, Iger wrote in his book.

Iger wanted Disney to be in on it – not just as a distributor for the films, as their previous agreement had stated, but to own what Pixar was bringing to the table.

In 2006, Disney announced that it would acquire Pixar for US$7.4 billion, making Jobs, the majority shareholder in Pixar at the time, the majority shareholder in Disney.

Iger wrote in his book that the two companies were able to come together after he reached out to Jobs to forge a friendship and address any issues between the two companies.

Iger and Jobs enjoyed a long friendship until Jobs died in 2011. A month later, Iger joined the Apple Board, where he remained until he stepped down in 2019 ahead of launching Disney+.

In 2009, Iger led Disney’s acquisition of Marvel for US$4 billion. This gave Disney access to the Marvel comic book library, which was the beginning of the now multibillion-dollar, box office record-breaking Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Iger wrote that part of the reason Marvel CEO Ike Perlmutter was willing to sell the company was because Jobs called Perlmutter to “vouch for” Iger and praised how Iger had handled the Disney-Pixar merger.

In 2012, Iger led Disney’s acquisition of Lucasfilm for US$4.05 billion. This gave Disney control of the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises.

Iger said that he knew Lucas was nervous to sell Lucasfim to Disney – mostly because the Star Wars creator knew he would be selling his legacy with it. But eventually, Lucas warmed to the idea.

Lucas enlisted Kathleen Kennedy to lead Lucasfilm before the company was sold to Disney. The first Star Wars film made without Lucas was released a few years later, in 2015 – The Force Awakens, directed by J.J Abrams.

The buying spree continued in 2018, when Disney agreed to buy 21st Century Fox. Fox at the time was owned by Rupert Murdoch who, after the sale, became one of Disney’s largest shareholders.

Forbes reported in March that, if Murdoch were to cash in all stock available to him from the Disney deal, he would own about US$10.5 billion worth of Disney stock. In addition, Variety reported that collectively, the Murdoch family members are now “the largest individual shareholders in Disney”.

Iger wrote in his memoir that Murdoch selling the company he had built from scratch was an indicator that the “disruption” which was threatening the entertainment industry was now inevitable.

“As [Rupert Murdoch] pondered the future of his company in such a disrupted world, he concluded the smartest thing to do was to sell and give his shareholders and his family a chance to convert its 21st Century Fox stock into Disney stock, believing we were better positioned to withstand the change and, combined, we’d be even stronger,” Iger wrote in his book.

In March, the merger between 21st Century Fox and Disney was completed, with a price tag of US$71.3 billion. This move made Disney the second-largest media company in the world, Forbes reported.

Iger is known among his peers for being a very kind leader and his contemporaries have praised the way he led the mergers of Pixar, Marvel and Lucasfilm.

In the past 14 years, he has been pivotal in the 335 per cent growth in profits to US$260 billion, Business Insider reported.

Forbes also reports that under Iger, Disney has created more than 70,000 new jobs.

“Literally, I have never heard one person say a bad thing about him and I have never seen him be mean,” billionaire David Geffen told The New York Times. “To be honourable, decent, smart, successful, and a terrific guy is unusual anywhere. But it is most unusual in the entertainment business. He’s in a category of one.”

Iger’s own increasing fortune has paralleled the rise in Disney’s value over the years he’s been at the helm.

Forbes reports that Iger’s net worth is US$690 million, making him richer than the current Disney heir, Abigail Disney, who has said she’s worth about US$120 million.

Forbes reported that Iger’s fortune is split between his Disney shares “and cash or other investment from sales of Disney shares over the decades”.

According to Forbes, Iger was compensated US$65.6 million in 2018, which is 1,424 times the average Disney employee’s salary. He had been given another US$26.3 million in stock after he successfully closed the Disney-Fox merger and for agreeing to extend his contract until 2021. His initial compensation last year was US$39.3 million (not including stock rewards).

In April 2019, Abigail Disney publicly criticised Iger’s high pay on Twitter and later wrote an op-ed in elaborating on her thoughts.

“I’m not arguing that Iger and others do not deserve bonuses. They do,” Disney wrote. “They have led the company brilliantly. I am saying that the people who contribute to its success also deserve a share of the profits they have helped make happen.”

Not much is known about Iger’s spending. He lives in a US$19 million home in Brentwood, California, with his wife and their two children.

They bought their Brentwood home in 2006 from actress Michelle Pfeiffer for about US$19 million, the Orlando Sentinel reported.

The home is 7,500 square feet and has five bedrooms with nine bathrooms, with a guest house, a tennis court, and a pool. At the time of a 2018 interview with Vogue, Iger was still living in Brentwood.

The Igers previously owned an apartment on the Upper East Side of New York City. The property sold in 2018 for US$18.75 million, Business Insider reported.

Iger spends time maintaining his mental and physical health. He told The New York Times that he wakes up at 4.15 every morning and doesn’t touch his phone until he’s finished his morning exercisers.

Iger said he doesn’t eat carbs unless it’s pizza, recalling that during his high school years, he worked at his local Pizza Hut.

When he’s “off the clock,” he travels. Iger is a regular at the Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference in Sun Valley, Idaho. The media conference is a hub for entertainment and tech moguls such as Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.

Variety reported that in 2019, Iger attended along with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Shari Redstone, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky, and former Democratic presidential candidate John Hickenlooper.

In December, the former CEO and his wife committed $1 million to launch the Iger-Bay Endowed Scholarship at Iger’s alma mater, Ithaca College. The scholarship aims to boost diversity in the media industry.

In his personal life, Iger has a set of A-list friends who have been known to rave about him. One of those is media mogul Oprah Winfrey, who has said that if Iger were to run for president, she would vote for him and campaign on his behalf.

“This is not really where I intended to be tonight,” Winfrey said at the Centennial Awards, where Iger was being honoured, in October. “I was hoping that by this time in early fall, I would be knocking on doors in Des Moines, wearing an ‘Iger 2020’ T-shirt. Bob Iger’s guidance and decency is exactly what the country needs right now.”

He is also a close to Jeffrey Katzenberg, co-founder of DreamWorks and former chairman of Walt Disney Studios. Iger and Katzenberg have been friends for years, and Katzenberg is among the group of people who have been trying to encourage the Disney CEO to run for president.

“No matter how much I begged Bob,” Katzenberg said while presenting the Simon Wiesenthal Center Humanitarian Award to Iger in April. “He just wasn’t willing to run for president of the United States.”

Iger has been involved in politics in the past. Soon after Donald Trump was elected president, Iger joined Trump’s Strategic and Policy Forum.

Trump’s Strategic and Policy Forum was a business council created to hear the perspectives of different leaders on how to improve job growth in the US.

Iger stepped down in 2017 after Trump announced the US would withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement, Variety reported.

In his book, Iger admitted that he once considered running for president, but ultimately decided against it.

“I think the Democratic Party would brand me as just another rich guy who’s out of touch with America who doesn’t have any sense for what’s good for the plight of the people,” he told The New York Times in a September 2019 profile.

Iger outlined what would have been the central themes of his campaign, had he run.

“America is gravely in need of optimism, of looking at the future and believing that so many things are going to be all right, or that we as a nation can attack some of the most critical problems of our day,” Iger said at The Atlantic Festival in Washington in September. “And that could be the environment, that could be income disparity, that could be the technology's impact on the world from a disruption perspective. It could be the cost of education, availability of affordable housing, health care. You name it.”

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This article originally appeared on Business Insider