This CEO immigrated to America with “nothing” before scaling a $12.6 billion energy empire

Air Products CEO Seifi Ghasemi lived and went to school in an oil refinery in Iran in the 1950s.

Transcript

00:00 You grew up in Iran. You were educated, began your education in Iran.

00:04 Yes, I was educated in there. I went to a special school, which was for six years,

00:11 which was actually the school was in a refinery. We lived in a refinery. That's why I know the

00:16 oil and gas business pretty well. You lived in a refinery.

00:20 Yes. Our school was right in the middle of the refinery in a city of Abadan.

00:26 The purpose of that school was to train people who knew enough about the refinery to become

00:31 future managers. We are talking about 1950s now. But you left Iran.

00:35 I left Iran in 1966. I came to the United States. I was very fortunate. I went to

00:41 Stanford University and I started working in the United States. I'm married to a lovely lady,

00:47 which we are still married for 55 years. But she was very curious to see the culture

00:54 in the country I was born. And we went there in 1971. I taught at the university there for two

01:03 years. And then I ended up working for the government and I was put in charge of developing

01:09 the steel industry for the country. And then in 1979, when the turmoil happened, that wasn't a

01:17 place for me and my wife to live in because my wife happens to be Jewish. And I left everything

01:23 behind and came to the U.S. with nothing. And we started from scratch.

01:28 [Music]