Greg Garland and Marvin Ellison led major American companies during overlapping years, but their careers unfolded in different industries. Garland was the first CEO of Phillips 66 after its separation from ConocoPhillips in 2012. Ellison led JCPenney before joining Lowe’s in 2018, where he serves as chairman, president, and CEO.
Their corporate biographies and board filings show separate career paths. Those records do not establish a shared board seat, business partnership, or family relationship. The useful comparison starts with their first jobs. Garland began as a plastics project engineer, while Ellison took a part-time store security job to help pay for college. Both eventually led companies where the work they had learned firsthand shaped the decisions they made at the top.
At a Glance
| Detail | Greg Garland | Marvin Ellison |
|---|---|---|
| Name in corporate records | Gregory C. Garland, also known as Greg C. Garland | Marvin R. Ellison |
| Age listed in 2026 filings | 68, according to ExxonMobil | 61, according to FedEx |
| Education | B.S. in chemical engineering, Texas A&M University, 1980 | B.B.A. in marketing, Memphis State University, 1989. Executive MBA, Emory University, 2005 |
| First documented industry job | Project engineer at Phillips Petroleum | Part-time security officer at Target |
| Major CEO roles | Chevron Phillips Chemical and Phillips 66 | JCPenney and Lowe’s |
| Current public company roles | Director at ExxonMobil and Amgen | Lowe’s chairman, president, and CEO. FedEx director |
Greg Garland’s Start in Engineering
Garland entered Texas A&M University as a zoology major. Speaking to engineering students there in 2022, he recalled that both parents had impressed upon him the importance of college, even though he arrived without a clear career plan. A conversation with a friend while studying in Aston Hall prompted him to rethink his choice. The following morning, he switched to chemical engineering.
He graduated in 1980 and joined Phillips Petroleum as a project engineer at its Plastics Technical Center. His next jobs brought him closer to customers and commercial decisions. He worked in plastics resin sales, moved into business development and chemicals management, and eventually ran the company’s natural gas liquids business.
In 1997, Garland took charge of Phillips’ operations in Qatar and the Middle East. He later told Texas A&M students that he had been reluctant to work overseas and accepted after being told his job depended on it. He and his wife moved to Qatar, where he helped develop and arrange financing for a large chemicals facility. Looking back, Garland credited that assignment with preparing him for the responsibilities he would take on as CEO.
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How Garland Built an Independent Phillips 66
Garland moved into senior planning and specialty chemicals roles at Chevron Phillips Chemical in 2000 and became its president and CEO in 2008. He left that position in 2010 for ConocoPhillips, where he oversaw exploration and production in the Americas. By then, he had worked on both sides of the industry, from producing oil and gas to turning raw materials into products.
That experience mattered when ConocoPhillips spun off Phillips 66 in 2012. As the new company’s first CEO, Garland took charge of an independent business spanning refining, chemicals, fuel marketing, and the transportation and storage of energy products. During his decade as CEO, Phillips 66 expanded its midstream operations, including its position in crude oil and natural gas liquids.
Garland handed the CEO role to Mark Lashier on July 1, 2022, and stayed on as executive chairman during the transition. He retired from the Phillips 66 board on May 15, 2024. The two dates mark different events. The first ended his day-to-day leadership as CEO, and the second closed his board tenure at the company.
Marvin Ellison’s Childhood in West Tennessee
Ellison grew up outside Brownsville, Tennessee, the middle of seven children. In a first-person account of his childhood, he recalled living in a house without indoor plumbing. His father, Ivory, picked cotton and often held several jobs, while his mother worked as a maid at a truck-stop motel. The family’s finances improved after his father went into insurance sales.
Church was central to family life. Ellison and his siblings performed alongside their parents in a traveling gospel group called the Ellison Family. His father had left high school to help bring in the family’s crops after an older relative fell ill. Ellison later told the University of Memphis that his father consistently urged his children to pursue the education he had been unable to finish.
Ellison chose Memphis State University, now the University of Memphis, because it let him experience a larger city while staying close to home. He studied marketing and took a part-time security job at a Memphis Target, earning $4.35 an hour to help cover books and other expenses. That job became the start of a 15-year career with the retailer. By the time he left in 2002, he was Target’s director of assets protection.
From Home Depot to JCPenney
Ellison joined Home Depot in 2002 and moved through loss prevention, logistics, and regional store leadership. He earned his Executive MBA from Emory in 2005 while working at the company. By the end of his 12 years there, he was executive vice president of U.S. stores. His responsibilities included sales, store operations, installation services, and tool rental, giving him experience serving both homeowners and contractors.
JCPenney hired Ellison as president and CEO-designate in 2014. He became CEO in 2015 and board chairman in 2016. The department store chain was trying to bring shoppers back and find new sources of sales. Under Ellison, it expanded into major appliances and worked to improve how customers shopped across stores and its website.
JCPenney reported its first annual net profit since 2010 for fiscal 2016. The following year, it announced plans to close roughly 130 to 140 stores. Those developments capture the difficulty of the assignment. The company could make progress in individual categories and still face hard decisions about the size of its store network.
What Ellison Changed at Lowe’s
Ellison succeeded Robert Niblock as Lowe’s president and CEO on July 2, 2018, and added the chairmanship in 2021. Early in his tenure, Lowe’s announced that it would close 51 underperforming stores across the United States and Canada. It also moved to exit its Mexican retail operations as it narrowed its focus.
A later priority was winning more business from contractors, builders, and other trade customers, whom Lowe’s calls Pro customers. In 2025, the company acquired Artisan Design Group and Foundation Building Materials. The latter brought more than 370 distribution locations across the United States and Canada. Together, the acquisitions gave Lowe’s a way to serve builders through materials distribution and interior installation services as well as its stores.
In Lowe’s August 2026 earnings release, Ellison pointed to growth in its professional, online, and home services businesses while reporting pressure on discretionary purchases by do-it-yourself shoppers. He also serves on the FedEx board and on the University of Memphis Board of Trustees. The National Retail Federation gave him its Visionary Award in 2023.
Family Life, Civic Work, and Garland’s Board Roles
Garland and his wife, Gail, have supported the Barbara Bush Houston Literacy Foundation. The foundation has listed them together as sponsors of its annual Celebration of Reading, and Amgen identifies Garland as the foundation’s vice chair. His civic work also includes advisory service at MD Anderson Cancer Center and a role as a founding member of Houston’s CEOs Against Cancer.
Garland’s retirement from Phillips 66 opened a new phase of his board career. He has served as an Amgen director since 2013 and joined ExxonMobil’s board in November 2025. At ExxonMobil, he sits on the audit and finance committees.
Ellison met his wife, Sharyn, in the university library in Memphis. The university’s alumni magazine identifies their two children as Donavan and Gabrielle. Lowe’s says Marvin and Sharyn support faith-based and charitable organizations that promote higher education and opportunities for minority youth.
In 2021, Ellison returned to Brownsville with his father to visit the site of the new city hall. The building was being developed as a community gathering space with help from Lowe’s 100 Hometowns initiative. It was a public occasion that brought his work at Lowe’s back to the town where he grew up.
Executive Pay and Net Worth
Phillips 66 reported $18,229,917 in total compensation for Garland in 2022, the year he moved from CEO to executive chairman. About $12.3 million of the disclosed total reflected stock and option awards.
Lowe’s reported $21,581,889 in total compensation for Ellison in fiscal 2025, including $1,544,231 in base salary. Stock and option awards accounted for about $16.7 million of the total. These disclosures value equity awards at the time of grant. Neither executive’s personal net worth could be reliably verified from the available records.
The most revealing parallel between their careers is the kind of work each returned to when the decisions got bigger. Garland drew on decades in chemicals and energy operations when he helped set up Phillips 66 as an independent company. Ellison brought years of store operations and logistics to Lowe’s, where serving contractors meant expanding the company’s ability to distribute materials and deliver services. Their early jobs help explain the priorities each carried into the CEO’s office.
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