Frank R. Jimenez
ITT Corporation
Vice President and General Counsel
“Never be too sure where your career might lead you,” advises Frank Jimenez, VP and general counsel for ITT Corporation. “If anyone had told me fourteen years ago, when I was still a partner in a Miami firm, that my professional future would include the Pentagon followed by (the White Plains, New York-based) ITT Corporation, I would have never believed them.”
Prior to joining the $11 billion high-technology engineering and manufacturing company in June of 2009, Jimenez served under Presidents Bush and Obama as general counsel of the Navy, leading a global office of nearly 850 staff as chief legal and ethics officer for the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps. Before that he served as chief of staff of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and led Secretary Mel Martinez’s senior management team for the $34 billion, 10,000- employee agency.
Jimenez’ government practice began in Miami. While still an associate at the respected firm Steel Hector & Davis LLP (now Squire, Sanders & Dempsey LLP), he took a leave of absence to staff Jeb Bush’s 1994 campaign for governor of Florida. Bush’s first gubernatorial bid was unsuccessful but he ran again four years later and won. At that time, Jimenez— who in the interim had made partner—accepted an offer to join the new governor’s office, eventually becoming deputy chief of staff and acting general counsel. Bush remains a friend and mentor.
Though not as big as the Navy, ITT has more than 40,000 employees operating in 60 countries and provides communications, sensing, imaging, and other defense solutions as a top-tier U.S. defense contractor. “My five-year tenure at the Pentagon provided invaluable experience that has been very helpful in my new position,” Jimenez says. “And while adjusting to in-house corporate culture presented a bit of a learning curve for me, it hasn’t been overly steep.”
Along with defense experience, Jimenez brings legal and management skills as well as versatility to ITT, a company that is also a global leader in fluid technology and provides products for the aerospace, industrial, transportation, medical, and consumer markets. “Throughout my career, I’ve repeatedly found myself in new environments and [had to] come up to speed rather quickly,” he explains. “For the last dozen years, all of my jobs—though vastly different—have been in direct support of chief executives of very large multi-billion dollar organizations. Over time, I’ve become seasoned in how to support a direct executive across multiple responsibilities legal and non-legal in complex and matrixed organizations.”
Jimenez’s parents left Cuba for Puerto Rico in 1961 with just two suitcases and $500. For three years they remained in San Juan (where Jimenez was born) before moving on and settling permanently in Miami. “
My parents came to this country as poor immigrants without college educations,” recounts Jimenez, a Yale Law School graduate. “They took a risk by leaving Cuba, and worked incredibly hard to make a better life for their family. And in just one generation both of their sons obtained high-ranking, Senate-confirmed government positions [Jimenez’s older brother is Marcos Daniel Jimenez, former United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida]. That’s the glory and the beauty of this country.”
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From the September/October 2010 issue of Diversity & Bar®