Disney’s New CEO Quit Sculpture Studies for Business Degree (1)

In the late 1980s, at the only high school in the Boston suburb of Medfield, Massachusetts, Josh D’Amaro went by the nickname “Chief.” A friend, Kevin Foley, even printed it on the back of D’Amaro’s soccer jersey.

“He always had those natural leadership tendencies,” said Foley, who now runs JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s global capital markets business. “There was an element where people would gravitate towards him.”

Josh D’Amaro

Source: The Walt Disney Company/Getty Images

Four decades later, D’Amaro has regained the title, this time as chief executive officer of Walt Disney Co., where he’ll succeed Bob Iger as only the eighth person to ...