Jeffrey Bleustein
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Jeffrey L. Bleustein is an American business executive, and the former Chief executive officer of Harley-Davidson. He is credited with helping save the company from possible bankruptcy in the 1980s, and leading the company's resurgence as the dominant motorcycle manufacturer in the United States.[1]
Bleustein is a native of Scarsdale, New York, and comes from a family with a background in manufacturing. His grandfather, an immigrant from Poland, ran a company called Atlas Baby Carriage in the Bronx, along with his father and two of his uncles.[2][3]
After graduating from A.B. Davis High School,[4] he earned a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from Cornell University, and a master's degree and PhD in engineering mechanics from Columbia University.[5] He spent a year as a NATO postdoctoral fellow in England.[2]
Early career
From 1966 to 1971, Bleustein was an associate professor of engineering and applied sciences at Yale University.[5] His work on piezoelectricity along with related work by Yuri Vasilyevich Gulyayev on a new type of transverse surface acoustic wave led to that wave being called the Bleustein-Gulyaev wave.[6]
In 1971, he decided to enter the corporate world and took a job as a technology consultant with American Machine and Foundry, commonly known as AMF, a sporting goods manufacturer.[2] He was considered the "golden boy" of AMF's engineering team.[7] AMF had purchased the Harley-Davidson motorcycle company in 1969. In 1975, AMF assigned Bleustein to help reorganize Harley-Davidson's engineering operations, which he described as "an overgrown blacksmith shop" at that time.[1] He began commuting from New York to Milwaukee one day a week to manage the process.[2]
