President Barack Obama tours Millennium Steel Service with Henry Jackson, CEO of Millennium Steel, in Princeton, Indiana, Oct. 3, 2014. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
When President Barack Obama visited Indiana-based Millennium Steel Service on Manufacturing Day in early October, CEO Henry Jackson had one important message to share with him: People need help to achieve their potential.
“I, for one, am a big supporter of government involvement in growing the middle class,” said Jackson, who lives in Lexington.
Millennium Steel, a joint venture with Toyota Tsusho America Inc., is a minority-owned Tier I raw material supplier for steel to Toyota Motor Manufacturing and is responsible for all logistical aspects of the steel supply chain, including ordering, purchasing, processing, warehousing and delivery. In its first 10 years, the company’s revenues grew from $37 million in 2001 to $250 million in 2011, and its workforce increased from 10 employees to a current team of 54.
Jackson, who lives in Lexington, uses his own story as his best example of the importance of government help in creating opportunities. Raised by his grandmother in a poor neighborhood in Chicago, he was drafted into the Army to serve in Vietnam as part of a finance unit in 1969. With financial help from the GI bill, he earned a bachelor’s degree in accounting from DePaul University when he returned to the United States and was hired by Clark Equipment as a financial planning manager. He rose through the company’s ranks to vice president and chief financial officer for Clark Material Handling and earned his MBA from the University of Notre Dame.
In 1994, he launched the plastic injection-molding company Jackson Plastics in Nicholasville, Kentucky, with help from Small Business Administration loans, Kentucky workforce grants and additional government financing for the purchase of equipment, he said. The company became a Tier 1 and 2 supplier to Toyota.
Jackson leveraged his relationship with Toyota into the creation of Millennium Steel Service. In addition, Jackson has been involved in another steel-related joint venture, Millennium Steel of Texas in San Antonio, and the automotive interiors manufacturer Synova Carpet in North Carolina.
“Don’t get me wrong — a lot of luck was in that, too,” said Jackson of his growth as a business owner and entrepreneur. “But a lot of it is my determination to succeed, and having people help you.”
Jackson said he had many valuable mentors who helped him develop as a business leader along the way, including former CEO of Clark Material Handling Gary Bello.
“Gary passed a lot of his knowledge on to me of how to respect employees and how to treat people, and that has stayed with me and been a big benefit to my career,” Jackson said.
Jackson said that the guidance of Osamu “Simon” Nagata, president and CEO of Toyota Motor Engineering and Manufacturing North America, and Toyota senior vice president Chris Nielsen have also been instrumental in his success.
Jackson has served as chairman of Kentucky Technology Inc., and contributed his time to a host of local boards in Lexington, but he said the local organizations that best reflect his aspirations for the community have been the Urban League and Junior Achievement.
“They give people opportunities to develop themselves,” Jackson said. “That’s what I like about both programs. They are about encouraging and developing people to become better citizens.”
Jackson said Obama’s visit to his Princeton, Indiana, facility, during which he held a town hall meeting with team members and special guests, was interesting and rewarding for those who participated, and he appreciated the opportunity to share his perspective on helping others to succeed.
“Don’t give me this crap that you can just grow on your own and pull yourself up by the bootstrings,” he said. “As successful as I’ve been, it’s not because I pulled myself up by the bootstrings. It’s because I had people who helped me, and we sometimes forget that.”
About Henry Jackson
Age: 67
Currently: CEO, Millennium Steel Service, Princeton, Indiana; CEO, Millennium Steel of Texas, San Antonio, Texas; and president of Synova Carpets, Old Fort, North Carolina.
Previous: President and CEO of Jackson Plastics Inc., based in Nicholasville, Kentucky.
Education: Bachelor’s degree in accounting, DePaul University; MBA, University of Notre Dame
Hometown: Chicago; currently resides in Lexington.