Name: Kenneth L. Lay
Age: 62
Occupation: Consultant; founder and former chairman and CEO of Enron Corp.
Family: Wife, Linda; son Mark, daughter Robin from a previous marriage.
Born: 1942 in Tyrone, Mo. His father, Omer, tried selling farm equipment and working in a feed store but became a Baptist minister after bankruptcy forced the family to seek refuge with relatives.
Education: Bachelor's and master's degrees in economics from the University of Missouri; a doctorate in economics from the University of Houston.
Work history: Senior economist at Humble Oil and Refining Co. in Houston, the predecessor of Exxon, in 1965. After earning his doctorate, Lay was an economist in the Navy, and in 1971 became undersecretary of Energy under Rogers Morton. Envisioning a deregulated natural gas industry where the market set gas prices, Lay left government in 1974 to be an executive of Florida Gas, becoming president of the company by 1981. In 1982, he returned to Houston to run Transco Energy Co., and in 1984 took the helm of Houston Natural Gas. In 1985, HNG merged with InterNorth, based in Omaha, Neb., and the combined company became Enron with Lay as CEO. Enron reached No. 7 on the Fortune 500 in 2000 and claimed $101 billion in annual revenues.