Bill Bain

William Worthington Bain Jr. (July 30, 1937 – January 16, 2018) was an American management consultant, known for his role as one of the founders of the management consultancy that bears his name, Bain & Company. Prior to founding Bain & Company, he was a vice-president at the Boston Consulting Group (BCG). Early life William Bain was born on July 30, 1937, in Johnson City, Tennessee, to William Worthington Bain Sr. and his wife, Ruby Kathleen Bain (born Cloyd). His father was a small food wholesaler who had little formal education and came from a farming family with eleven siblings. He graduated from Science Hill High School in 1955. Later, he attended East Tennessee State College, majoring in engineering, for two years before transferring to Vanderbilt University, where he was a member of the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity. He graduated in 1959, earning Phi Beta Kappa honors, with a degree in history. He then got married and became a father. He did graduate work in history at Vanderbilt as a Woodrow Wilson Scholar in 1960. Career Bain briefly worked at a steel fabricating company, where he'd held summer jobs, before returning to Vanderbilt in 1960 to work as the school's director of development at the age of 26. In this capacity, he met Bruce Henderson, the founder of the Boston Consulting Group. After meeting Henderson, Bain agreed to join BCG in 1967 at a starting salary of $17,000 per year.