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Name: Bodman, Samuel
Current Position: Former Secretary
A native of Chicago, Samuel Wright Bodman has served as the Secretary of Energy from February 2005 until the inauguration of Barack Obama. Bodman graduated from Cornell University in 1961 with a bachelor’s in chemical engineering. In 1965, he completed his ScD at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
For the next six years Bodman served as an associate professor of chemical engineering at MIT and began his work in the financial sector as technical director of the American Research and Development Corporation, a pioneer venture capital firm. He and his colleagues provided financial and managerial support to scores of new business enterprises located throughout the United States.
Bodman then went to work for Fidelity Venture Associates, a division of Fidelity Investments. In 1983 he was named president and chief operating officer of Fidelity Investments and a director of the Fidelity Group of Mutual Funds. In 1987, he joined Cabot Corporation, a Boston-based Fortune 300 company with global business activities in specialty chemicals and materials, where he served as chairman, CEO and a director.
Under Bodman’s leadership from 1987 to 2000, Cabot was one of America’s largest polluters, accounting for 60,000 tons of airborne toxic emissions annually. Also, Cabot has been heavily involved in the extraction of key minerals from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where the multinational corporation was linked, among others, to various crimes, including extortion, rape, massacres and bribery.
Bodman joined the Bush Administration in 2001 as the deputy secretary of the Department of Commerce. He then was appointed to serve as the deputy secretary of the Treasury Department in February 2004.
High-Tech Genocide in Congo (Project Censored)
Bush’s Choice for Energy Secretary Was One of Texas’ Top Five Worst Polluters (by Jason Leopold, Common Dreams)