Harold Hamm

Harold Hamm is the founder and executive chairman of Continental Resources, one of the largest independent oil and natural gas companies in the United States. Born in 1945 in Lexington, Oklahoma, as the youngest of 13 children in a family of sharecroppers, Hamm's rise from poverty to becoming one of America's wealthiest self-made individuals is a quintessential American success story. He started his first oil-related business at age 21 — a trucking company servicing oil wells — and founded Continental Resources in 1967.

Hamm is often called the "Father of the Bakken" for his instrumental role in unlocking the massive Bakken Shale formation in North Dakota. His conviction that horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing could economically extract oil from tight shale formations was met with skepticism by much of the industry, but he persisted for years until the technology proved him right. The Bakken revolution he championed helped transform the United States from a declining oil producer into the world's largest oil-producing nation, fundamentally reshaping global energy markets.

Hamm's determination and optimism are legendary in the oil industry. He has been a tireless advocate for American energy independence and has used his success to give back generously, particularly to diabetes research. His Harold Hamm Diabetes Center at the University of Oklahoma has become a leading institution in the fight against the disease. From sharecropper's son to energy titan, Harold Hamm's story embodies the power of persistence, vision, and unwavering belief in American enterprise.

Harold Glenn Hamm was born on December 11, 1945, in Lexington, Oklahoma, the youngest of 13 children in a sharecropper family. His parents, Leland and Jane Hamm, farmed cotton on land they did not own, and young Harold grew up in poverty without running water or electricity. He started working at age nine, pumping gas and doing odd jobs. He never attended a traditional four-year university, instead earning a degree from a small local college while already working in the oil fields. In 1967, at age 21, he started his first oil company with a single truck and a $1,000 investment, driving around rural Oklahoma looking for opportunities to drill on small leases that larger companies had overlooked.