Five CEOs who prove that nice guys can still finish first

Nick Woodman, CEO of portable camera maker GoPro and the highest paid exec in the U.S. last year became a household name last week when he paid $229 million back to his company to keep a promise.

The costly gesture was part of a commitment Woodman made to his first employee Neil Dana while the pair were roommates at the University of California. The story goes, Woodman offered Dana 10 per cent of any proceeds he received from the sale of the company’s shares.

As GoPro neared an initial public offering in 2011, Woodman made good, granting Dana more than six million options and agreeing to pay the company back when Dana exercised options. Dana, the company’s director of music and specialty sales, exercised his options last week with Woodman paying out of pocket to refill the company’s coffers.

Not that it’ll be missed; the GoPro CEO’s networth is around $2.3 billion.

Woodman now adds his name to a stable of “nice guy” CEOs – company founders and business owners who aren’t afraid to pass the buck in exchange for a little karma or to fund a feelgood pet project. We look at four other friendly leaders.

Doug Tompkins, founder of The North Face and ESPRIT

In 1968, mountain climbers and surfers Doug Tompkins and Yvon Chouinard took the ultimate adventure, driving a van from California to Patagonia, Chile. Eventually, the pair would go on to start two of the most successful outdoor clothing companies of all time – Tompkins created The North Face and Esprit while Chouinard launched the aptly named Patagonia.

While both have spent the remainder of their careers fiercely defending environmental causes, Tompkins’ decision to sell his stake in Esprit and buy up land for conservation in the southern Chile he initially fell in love with, rings out as the ultimate nice guy pet projects.

All in, Tompkins has bought well over a million acres and saved it from mining and other invasive resource-gathering activities.

Dan Price, founder and CEO of Gravity Payments

The thirty-something CEO of credit card processing company Gravity Payments made headlines in April when he announced plans to make his company’s minimum annual salary $70,000. The decision was built around a nagging guilt that had lingered since he hired his first employee for $24,000 with no health care benefits.

“It was a pretty bad package, and I felt horrible about it,” Price told Business Insider. “It was always eating away at me, and I promised myself that I would do the best I could to resolve that as soon as I could.”

Price said he pulled the number from a Princeton University study finding that emotional wellbeing grew with income, but only up to $75,000.

With 120 employees on the books, the $70,000 salary drew both applause and criticism – it also garnered a ton of new applicants, 3,500 to be exact.

Lakshmi Mittal, chairman and CEO ArcelorMittal

“Friendly steel tycoon” may feel a bit oxymoronic but Lakshmi Mittal – chairman and CEO of the world’s largest steelmaker ArcelorMittal – has developed a bit of a giving streak when it comes to the Olympics. Disappointed with his country’s abysmal showing in the Olympic games between 1996 and 2004, the Indian-born metal magnate set up a $9 million trust to develop the country’s athletes in sports like squash, badminton and swimming, among others.

The goal – win more medals for Mittal’s country. The trust helped nearly 50 athletes, culminating in a gold medal win for the country at the London Olympics in 2012 before the trust was dissolved last March.

But the trust fund wasn’t the only show of Mittal’s enthusiasm for the sports event. The CEO also put up more than $30 million towards the construction of the 376-foot tall ArcelorMittal Orbit sculpture and observation tower in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in Stratford, London.

Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Group

With his face in a perma-grin, it’s hard to imagine Sir Richard Branson being anything but nice. With an estimated worth of $5 billion, it seems like each new year brings a new reason to love the 64-year-old drop-out and self-made billionaire’s style of managing.

Last year, taking a cue from Netflix, Branson decided to enact a no-limit vacation policy where salaried-employees can decide how much vacation time they want to take.

“Simply stated, the policy-that-isn’t permits all salaried staff to take off whenever they want for as long as they want,” he wrote in a blog with the news. “There is no need to ask for prior approval and neither the employees themselves nor their managers are asked or expected to keep track of their days away from the office.”

But one of Branson’s boldest nice guy moves was participating in a hunger strike in 2009 with actress Mia Farrow to protest the Sudanese government’s decision to expel foreign aid organizations from the country in light of the war in the country’s Darfur region. Nice guy Branson, right?