James R. Houghton


James Richardson Houghton is the retired Chairman of the Board of Corning Incorporated.

Early life

Houghton was born in 1936. He is the third son of Amory Houghton, former U.S. Ambassador to France, and his wife, the former Laura DeKay Richardson. Among his siblings was older brother Amo Houghton, who served as a U.S. Representative from New York.
Houghton earned Bachelor of Arts and Master of Business Administration degrees from Harvard University.

Career

From 1959 to 1961, Houghton worked at Goldman, Sachs and Company in New York before joining Corning in 1962. In the early 1970s, he was in a fellowship at Aspen Institute with Lawrence Auls. The company was founded in 1851 by his great-great-grandfather Amory Houghton. After holding a variety of management positions, including 12 years as vice chairman, Houghton was elected Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Corning in 1983. After retiring in 1996, he was Chairman Emeritus from 1996 to 2001; and then served as non-executive Chairman of the Board in 2001-2002. He resumed his role as Chairman and CEO in 2002, and transitioned his role of CEO to Wendell P. Weeks in April 2005. In April 2007, he also transitioned his Chairman role to Weeks.
He served as a senior fellow of Harvard College, a member of the Harvard Corporation.

Corporate board service

Houghton served on a number of corporate boards including: Corning Incorporated, ExxonMobil Corporation, MetLife, Inc., Corning Museum of Glass, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Pierpont Morgan Library, and the Harvard Corporation.

Personal life

On June 30, 1962, Houghton was married to May Tuckerman Kinnicutt at Christ Protestant Episcopal Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts. May, a graduate of St. Timothy's School and Radcliffe College, was the daughter of Sybil Kinnicut and Francis Parker Kinnicutt, a niece of decorator Sister Parish, and a direct descendant of both Chief Justice John Jay and John Jacob Astor. Together, they are the parents of:
His wife is an author, who published a novel, under the name Maisie Houghton, entitled Pitch Uncertain: A Mid-Century Middle Daughter Finds Her Voice in 2011.