Jim Farley: The Ford CEO’s Path From Lexus to the Corner Office

James Duncan Farley Jr. was born on June 10, 1962, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the son of a banker. His family later settled in Greenwich, Connecticut. He went on to lead one of the best-known industrial companies in the United States, Ford Motor Co., a job he has held since October 2020.

Farley, known as Jim, attended Portsmouth Abbey School in Rhode Island, earned a bachelor’s degree at Georgetown University and completed an MBA at the UCLA Anderson School of Management. His family history with the company runs deep: according to his Wikipedia biography, his grandfather worked at Ford’s River Rouge plant in 1918. The same entry lists his cousins as the entertainers Chris, Kevin and John Farley and the hockey broadcaster Tripp Tracy. He has three children.

From Lexus to Ford

Before Ford, Farley worked at Toyota, where he became group vice president and general manager of Lexus, the company’s luxury brand. In that role he oversaw sales, marketing and customer satisfaction. The sources reviewed do not give dates for the Lexus job.

He joined Ford in November 2007 and moved through a series of jobs over the next dozen years. From 2015 to 2017 he was chief executive and chairman of Ford of Europe. In June 2017 he became executive vice president and president of global markets, a post he held until May 2019. That month he took over a new portfolio as president of New Business, Technology and Strategy. In February 2020 he was named chief operating officer.

On August 4, 2020, Ford announced that Farley would succeed Jim Hackett as chief executive. He took the job on October 1, 2020.

The electric truck bet

The project most closely tied to Farley’s tenure in recent coverage is Ford’s Universal EV Platform, a new underlying design meant to support a range of electric vehicles, from trucks to smaller crossovers. Its first product is a four-door, midsize electric pickup with a targeted starting price of around $30,000. Ford plans to build it at its Louisville Assembly Plant in Kentucky, with a launch scheduled for 2027, according to trade coverage of the company’s announcements around CES 2026 and the Detroit auto show. That coverage put the cost of overhauling the factory at an estimated $5 billion.

Farley has described the effort as among the most challenging projects he has worked on. The program is a large bet on whether buyers will pay for a lower-priced electric truck, and the answer will not be known until the vehicle reaches showrooms.

Quality, pay and outside roles

Ford’s record on quality has drawn scrutiny during his time as chief executive. Wikipedia, citing a law firm’s statistics, says the company issued a record 153 recalls in 2025. The same entry reports that Ford has used a camera and machine-learning system called MAIVS to spot assembly defects at 17 North American plants, and that the company rehired more than 300 quality inspectors, which suggests the software has not replaced human checks.

The entry also reports that Farley’s pay has topped $20 million a year as chief executive, and that his 2025 total rose 11% to about $27.5 million. Those figures are reported secondhand.

In July 2025, Farley predicted that artificial intelligence would replace about half of white-collar workers in the United States. He has also sat on outside boards. He joined the board of Harley-Davidson in July 2021 and left it in February 2026. McDonald’s elected him to its board effective February 4, 2026.

A regional note

No verified connection between Farley and Winfield or Cowley County turned up in the sources reviewed. Ford does run a large assembly plant in Claycomo, Missouri, near Kansas City, which builds the F-150 pickup and the Transit van, according to search summaries of Wikipedia’s article on that plant. Nothing reviewed linked Farley personally to it.

Sources: Wikipedia, “Jim Farley (businessman)”; Global Fleet; Wikipedia, “Ford Kansas City Assembly Plant.”