Spring 2018 Harbert Magazine

Spring 2018

HITTING THE

ETHICS

BULLSEYE

Remember Odysseus?

The guy ran into lots of trials, lots of obstacles, but he overcame them all with a cool head, a sharp intelligence, and no shortage of strength and courage—many of the qualities we expect from our modern-day CEOs. At the end of his 10-year journey home, he’s challenged to prove himself by shooting an arrow through 12 small rings. It’s no small feat.

In like fashion, today’s business leaders, to even get a shot at success, must meet sales estimates, make bottom line quotas, ensure compliance with cultural, social and environmental expectations, and pass through the narrow gap hemmed by fairness, integrity, honesty, and ethics.

For today’s exec, it’s no small feat to line up these often competing constraints, ring them all, and hit success.

You could make a reasonable argument that a CEO is duty-bound to act in the best interest of the shareholders.

And you could also argue that the bottom line is a business’ principal concern. Are you making money? Is your company returning value to its investors? Certainly a business isn’t long for this world if it’s not in the black.

All other considerations take a back seat.

Of course we should obey the law. Enforceable legalities are a clear, bright line. Stay on the right side of the line and you’re good. Stray to the wrong side and you’re looking at time in an orange suit. But here’s a question: Should legal definitions frame a business’s ethical code or its social responsibilities? Consider it good as long as it’s legal?

How about those pharmaceutical companies that raised the price of drugs by more than 5,000 percent?

And of course we should be principled. Recently, Larry Fink, founder and CEO of BlackRock (the world’s largest investment company), said in an open letter to CEOs: “Society is demanding that companies, both public and private, serve a social purpose. To prosper over time, every company must not only deliver financial performance, but also show how it makes a positive contribution to society. Companies must benefit all of their stakeholders, including shareholders, employees, customers and the communities in which they operate.”

That “social purpose” may well broaden the ethical imperative. As an investor, Fink may not be off the mark.

There’s a body of research that says that companies that have a history of operating ethically, that are socially and environmentally responsible, are more successful in the long run.

And there’s the rub.

The long run is a bit of a luxury. What if you have to make the quota, make the quarter, live up to projections?

At the current rate, about half of the S&P 500 will be replaced over the next 10 years. The long run? Nice work if you can get it.

No doubt the issues around responsibility, ethics, and business are difficult. To aim at being an ethical and profit-minded leader who’s conscious of shareholders and stakeholders is to look at a very small target through a lot of narrow constraints. As you may have guessed, maybe even experienced, it’s not an easy shot. In this issue, we’ll do our best to peer into some of the questions. Maybe with a dose of experience, a smattering of wisdom, and a pinch of common sense, we can see our way through.

CREDITS Troy Johnson Director,

HCOB Communications & Marketing

Joe McAdory Editor,

HCOB Communications & Marketing Created by The Media Production Group

Bruce Kuerten Director, Media Production Group at Auburn University Jim Earnhardt Editor,

Media Production Group at Auburn University

Art & Design/Production Jason Adams Jenni Hunt Illustrations Jason Adams Ely Beyer Contributors John DiJulio Teri Greene Jessamyn Saxon

Auburn University Harbert College of Business Office of Communications & Marketing 216 Lowder Hall • Auburn, AL 36849 (334) 844-8859

Celebrating 50 years In 1967, Auburn University’s Board of Trustees created a School of Business. We’d like to think we’ve aged well since then. In Fall 2017, we capped off a year-long celebration with an anniversary gala featuring alumni, student, and former faculty speakers.

Share your news Send us your announcements, photos, and letters. We love to hear what you’re up to. Submissions are included as space permits.

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Table of Contents

FEATURES 16

20

24

Jeff Stillwell

The Odyssey of Right

Business Ethics is a Team Sport

28

32

58

Doing Well by Doing Good

The Dark Triad

Living the SaltLife Conversations from the C-Suite

6

Inbox

12

How We Think

8

What You’re Up To

40 Research

10

What We’re Up To

43

Mission In Action

Joe Hanna

Dean’s Last Word: Harbert is hitting the target on ethics education

44

Entrepreneurship

45

With Your Dollar

46

Alumni News

In January 2018, the college introduced a new tagline— “Harbert. Inspiring business.” While we were pondering the subject of inspiration, we wanted to learn more about the people, moments, and experiences that inspired you on your career path. We also asked how some of you, in turn, have inspired others.

Here’s what you had to say: “For three weeks on my way into the factory every morning, I noticed a man standing outside the gate after working the night shift. Didn’t seem strange to anyone else in the offices, but it got harder and harder to drive by him each winter morning. I would sometimes roll down my window and ask if he was waiting on someone, and he would cheerfully confirm and wish me a happy morning, addressing me as “ma’am,” which I have certainly never earned in any form or fashion. I just decided to do as others and drive by him as I went into work. In operations finance, it’s easy to become merely a messenger among operations, management, and eventually investors. The ‘scorekeeper,’ as my boss loves to say. But this is such a waste—even if it’s all that’s expected of you. Whatever your organization’s offering is, be it goods or services; there is a body at the front line creating, championing, and sacrificing for the production number that you find on a spreadsheet. And you are never better or more valuable than this person—ever. It is our obligation to maximize those efforts and sacrifices on the floor by exploring all aspects of the administrative side. For example, find the reason that the production yield has been under target so that second and third shift don’t get scheduled for weekend overtime. And give that guy a ride! You might just find your conversation to be more enlightening about your factory than 10 hours in front of the computer screen.”

Anne Bentson Johnson ’16 Cost Accountant Johns Manville “My father always suggested that whatever I do, I should have a good understanding of business and how businesses work. I felt like accounting allowed me to do that. I have been exposed to so much in the companies I have worked for through the accounting and financial positions I have had and have been able to leverage that for more senior positions along the way. One of the most inspiring individuals for me at Auburn was Wayne Alderman. He always mixed his advice on our college careers with what will likely be happening on the other side of graduation. He was great in showing me how what I was learning would actually be put to use in the working world. I have also been fortunate to work for some very good people who helped me grow and were patient with me as I learned. Finally, I have to thank my wife of 34 years who has always encouraged me to keep pushing forward, particularly in the challenging times that occur from time to time.”

Scott MacArthur ’83 President & COO Michael & Son Services, Inc.

“My career has been focused on accounting and healthcare. I remember, while a student at Auburn, that a professor indicated that the accounting and healthcare industries would be expanding rapidly. So, I started in public accounting and developed a focus in healthcare auditing, and reimbursement and financial feasibility study consulting. My initial job led me to a regional firm with a heavy client focus in healthcare.

From there, I decided that national firm experience would be helpful for my career development. After being successful as a professional, I became tired of `billing hours,’ exercised my entrepreneurial urge and co-founded an internet-based contract management company addressing a problem and a need in healthcare management. This company was sold years later to a private equity firm and is currently in thousands of healthcare organizations throughout the county. I am proud that the initiative produced a significant return on investment for all stakeholders. As my career continues in public accounting providing transaction advisory services, one goal is to inspire others to develop an industry and service focus and, if the urge surfaces, take the entrepreneurial plunge by identifying a problem and filling a need with an effective business approach.”

Cole Powell ’80 Shareholder Elliott Davis “My career path is different than I ever imagined while at Auburn. In school, I hoped to find a corporate career and work my way up the ladder. Instead, I accepted a job offer right after graduation to join a startup as their first employee. The ability to work on the ground level of a project and not only come up with ideas, but be solely responsible for seeing them come to fruition, is both gratifying and inspiring. I love working every day knowing that I can have a direct impact on the company I am working for. I now try to encourage other students and peers to seek job opportunities that may be different than their friends or parents might have taken out of school.”

Regan Bercher ’15 Director of Membership Experience The Gathering Spot, Atlanta

Inbox “At 27 years old, I was offered to start a new region covering five states in the Southwest. I was the youngest regional manager ever hired by the Jones Motor Group, the oldest trucking company in America. The opportunity exposed me to a start-up environment that allowed me to experience what an entrepreneur goes through in establishing a new infrastructure. This ‘building’ chapter of starting a new business region for Jones Motor made me realize this is what I wanted to do with my career! In the first year, the new region had eight terminals, over 40 corporate accounts, and generated just over $10 million in revenue.

This fueled my confidence and lit my entrepreneurial fire. Three years later, I started my first business with confidence and a lot of diverse experience.”

Scott McGlon ’92 President McGlon Properties “As a marketing major with a sales concentration, I had the opportunity to have [Michael] Kincaid as my professor for multiple classes throughout my time at Auburn. He pushed me to follow my passion for sales and helped me in gaining the confidence it takes to be a successful sales rep. Once I began my career with Summer Classics, I spent a lot of time at different markets with the other sales reps; some of whom have been with the company for 15 to 20 years. Seeing their dedication to this company and the indoor and outdoor furniture industry is truly inspiring, and I am so thankful to have this opportunity right after graduating from college. I am very excited to see where this takes me.”

Lauren Bagby ’17 Designer Showroom Sales Representative Summer Classics and Gabby Home

“Leaving GTE after 14 years and working for three of their business units was a turning point. From there I went to work for a start-up company called Amtech Corp. It was the complete opposite of GTE. GTE was like an aircraft carrier, big, slow-moving, and you had to let the people know well in advance when a change was coming.

Sometimes we even had to tell them we’d made a change once it was done. Amtech was small, nimble, and we could change directions overnight. It was the most fun I’ve ever had in business. We created a new industry with our technology. We installed the first electronic toll system on the North Texas Turnpike Authority’s toll roads in Dallas. Then we installed it on all the railcars involved with other rail lines in the U.S. And, as the saying goes, the rest is history.”

Stuart Schoppert ’74 “I started out using my degree with Kraft Foods soon after graduation. After a year or so, I realized that working in an industrial setting didn’t fit my personality so started a position in sales with FritoLay, Inc. In my spare time I played on a competitive recreational softball team that was made up of primarily law enforcement members from a variety of agencies. After spending time with these public servants, I realized that law enforcement was my calling. I applied to several federal agencies and was soon reporting to the FBI Academy to start what ended up being a 25 year career.

During my career with the FBI, and since during my post-career with Morgan & Morgan, I’ve tried to lead by example and pay it forward whenever given an opportunity.”

“I was a desk clerk at a Howard Johnson’s when I was in high school.

One night, Ray Kroc, the founder of McDonald’s, came in to the hotel and checked in. I had happened to read an article about him by some strange coincidence a few days earlier. When he came in, I knew exactly who he was. He was pretty blown away that a 17-year-old kid knew who he was, so he came back to the front desk after he checked in and sat down and we had a long talk together.

He was awesome, and I loved his enthusiasm. When he walked out of the lobby after our conversation, I said to myself, “I want to do what that guy does. I want to be a CEO.” Thirty years later, I found myself making a decision about leaving an awesome company and dynamite job to become the CEO of a start-up. I reflected on my conversation with Ray Kroc 30 years earlier, and said that if I didn’t take the risk, when I am 80 years old I will not forgive myself for not following my dream. I took the CEO position, and Ray Kroc had a lot to do with it. I try to always now think that every conversation you have as a business person can have a lifetime impact on someone. That is an important responsibility to keep in mind as a leader.”

Mark Forchette ’81 CEO Delphinus Medical Technologies

R. Lee Walters, ’86 Principal Legal Investigator Morgan & Morgan Complex Litigation Group

Inspiration

HM, Spring 2018 7

What You’re Up To

Jeffrey Newton, a 2015 Executive MBA graduate, earned a promotion to brigadier general in a ceremony at the Alabama State Capitol in December 2017. His one-star rank was pinned by Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, an Auburn alumna, and Major Gen. Sheryl Gordon.

Former Harbert College marketing student David Bancroft, head chef and owner of Acre restaurant in Auburn, won a head-tohead battle with the acclaimed chef Jose Garces on an episode of Food Network’s “Iron Chef Showdown” in December.

Stephen Frakes ’70 has served as a captain for Paradigm Air Carriers piloting Boeing 757 sports charter flights for various Major League Baseball, NBA, and NHL teams. Over the past 12 years, his frequent fliers have included the Texas Rangers, Colorado Rockies, Seattle Mariners, Houston Rockets, Dallas Stars, and Phoenix Coyotes.

Tara Wilson, a 1997 finance graduate, recently placed on the 2017 list of the nation’s fastest-growing companies by Inc. Her company, the Tara Wilson Agency, an experiental marketing firm, includes clients such as Samsung, Nike, and Ann Taylor.

8 HM, Spring 2018

What We’re Up To

Harold Melton, the presiding justice of the Supreme Court of Georgia and a 1988 international business graduate, returned to campus in December to serve as Auburn University’s fall commencement speaker.

Melton advised graduates to “trust in all your years of development. Trust in the person you have become, and the person you are continuing to become.”

Dr. Haitham Eletrabi (middle), a 2013 MBA graduate, found business inspiration through his hobby—recreational tennis—and invented the Tennibot. Think Roomba for hardcourts or clay courts. The device can run for five hours on a charge and collect 70 balls at a time. It has received media mentions from Time, Huffington Post, and BBC News.

HM, Spring 2018 9

What We’re Up To Retired four-star Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey visited the Harbert College in November as part of the college’s yearlong 50th anniversary celebration. McCaffrey, a former White House cabinet member, participated in a moderated Q&A with MBA students and discussed leadership of complex organizations during an open campus forum at Foy Hall.

Jimmy Hilliard, Harbert Eminent Scholar of Finance, recently earned the Southern Finance Association’s Distinguished Scholar Award for 2017.

MBA student Macy Reece completed her Auburn volleyball career with a pair of awards presented by the Southeastern Conference. In addition to being named the SEC Volleyball Scholar-Athlete of the Year, Reece was named to the league’s Community Service team. Reece, who earned Dean’s List honors five times as an undergraduate, completed a bachelor’s degree in finance in three years.

10 HM, Spring 2018

Construction workers recently poured the concrete for the ground floor of the Graduate Business building.

Staff gathered at the new Graduate Building location to check out the progress. Completion of the new building is planned for Spring 2019.

Graduate business building, LIVE! Follow the action from our live webcam at:

http://bit.ly/harbertprogress HM, Spring 2018 11

How We Think

PROFIT is Not a Four Letter Word

Cries of corporate greed and disdain for wealthy business executives are swirling in the media and frothing through the political echo chambers.

College campuses, in particular, are ground zero for advancing the startling sentiment that “profit” is a dirty word because it is generated by exploiting human capital and destroying natural resources.

Business schools should take a front-line role to dispel the myths that underlie this narrative. We should reinforce the morality of the profit concept because without it, society at large would suffer, resources would be misallocated, and people would not have access to goods and services. With it, the lives of billions have been drastically improved, and it continues to lift people out of poverty on a global scale.

While the reasons for the “goodness” of profit are many, here are five key points that every business school should reinforce: 1. Profit is earned when a person or a business is producing something that the public wants. It is not an exploitative, zero-sum game whereby there is a “winner” and a “loser.”

Rather, profit is created through voluntary and mutually beneficial transactions.

3. Profit produces the spirit of entrepreneurship. It incentivizes creators and innovators to bring their ideas that create mutual benefit to fruition. Time, talent, and capital will flow into products and services that people want.

4. Profit is a key solution to society’s most pressing issues. Globally, we are faced with vexing challenges: pollution, human rights violations, resource depletion, and an expanding global middle class. Profit allows companies to invest in environmental and social initiatives. It has created the incentive for an unprecedented increase in industry collaborations that provide expertise and economies of scale to address fundamental problems that threaten our future.

5.

The quest for profit can lead to abuses and unethical behavior. Bad actors should be punished. Society must strike the proper balance between governmental oversight that inhibits bad behavior and too much regulation that chokes the ability for people and firms to pursue profit.

It is time for business schools to take a stand. It is time to reach out to our friends across campus and advocate that society’s greatest challenges can be addressed with profitable and collaborative

2. Profit is the reward for innovation that comes from putting business solutions. Students need to hear this on their first day of capital at risk. This reward incentivizes people or companies college; the future of our society is depending on them. to expand operations (which often includes hiring more employees) that bring innovative, convenient, or accessible Beth Davis-Sramek Gayle Parks Forehand Associate Professor products to the masses.

Supply Chain Management

Dear Self, Where are you going to be in 10 years ?

Signed, Me What are your life goals? What are your career goals? These things don’t just happen. You’ve got to have a plan.

I was at a faculty administrator’s conference on goal planning about 15 years ago and the speaker said, “I want you guys to write out what your life goals are and what you would like to accomplish within the next four years. Tell me about your family. Tell me about work.” It was kind of a bucket list. Then he asked us to write down what it would take to get some of these things done.

Then he said, “Here’s an envelope. Address it to yourself and I will mail it to you in about a year.” Wait . . . a letter to myself? He’s got to be crazy.

Honestly, I had forgotten about that crazy letter, those action steps designed to realize my goals. Sure enough, about a year and a half later, my letter came back to me and I completely understood the breadth of the assignment, what it meant.

If you think about something, great. But that only goes so far. However, if you tell other people about it, then there’s a greater probability of it happening. But let’s take it one step further. If you write it down in a detailed format, then you have a much higher probability of accomplishing those goals.

And that’s exactly what my students do. What are some of the things that students are going to brag about, or they come to the end of their life and they’re going to talk about?

Family. Friends. Accomplishments. Failures. Fun things they did, etc.

In the assignment, I said, “Stop thinking about looking for a job for a minute and tell me what your dreams are. Tell me when we meet in this room 10 years from now what you have done.” I want students to begin with the end result in mind, but 10 years from now tell me what you’ve done and let’s work backward.

In a job interview, business professionals might ask: “What are your goals? What are the goals of our corporation? What are the goals of our unit? How can you make an impact to accomplish those goals? If we want you to sell a thousand units, then tell me the activity that you are going to use on the first day and the first hour in order to get to your goal of a thousand? How are you going to spend your week in order to meet your goals?”

Corporations have goals for you. How are you going to be evaluated? That evaluation is, “What did you accomplish?”

Without thought-out plans on how to achieve your goals, personally or professionally, it’s increasingly difficult to accomplish your dreams. This letter-writing exercise prepares students for creating action-steps toward success.

Harbert College wants to turn out graduates that the business community wants, seeks, and desires. But our graduates and future graduates first need to know how to set goals and make plans to accomplish goals.

Daniel Butler Thomas Walter Center Professor Department of Marketing

HM, Spring 2018 13

How We Think

What can we learn from

Jelly Beans?

I pass a giant, sealed jar of jellybeans around in my Executive MBA class, asking students to guess how many beans are in the jar. Half the class writes their answers on a piece of paper, the other half emails me their guesses. Then I ask: Who in the class do you think will have the most accurate guess?

They often choose an engineer or the person with the most attention to detail. What I always find, though, is that the most accurate answer is actually the average of everybody’s answers. This teaches a fundamental principle: the wisdom of crowds. There is knowledge that resides in the group that does not reside between any one person’s ears.

I then start quizzing the students. For those who guessed pretty close to the correct amount, I ask why they were accurate. They typically describe their systematic methodology or something about their technical background that makes them well attuned to educated guesswork. Those that were farthest away, though, describe external factors contributing to their poor guesswork.

They note they were not given much time to consider the problem or were distracted by the class lecture that was going on simultaneously.

Psychologists call this the fundamental attribution error.

We ascribe successes to our wonderful, talented selves, but invent external attributions for our failures. Think, for instance, how company successes are always the result of brilliant strategies, but failures seem to be a result of market perturbations or the competitive environment.

The jelly bean exercise, though, belies a third important principle about managerial cognitions. The half of the class that emailed their guess is inevitably more accurate than the half that wrote their guess on a piece of paper. Are emailers smarter than writers? No! The exercise demonstrates the anchoring bias, which is a human tendency to make decisions based on initial information. Students emailing their guess were making their decision in a vacuum, so they were deciding “how many jelly beans are in the jar?” Those writing on the paper were deciding “how different will my guess about the number of jelly beans be from the already existing guesses?”

Their answers were biased by those that came before.

Next time you grab a handful of jelly beans, remind yourself that your decision making may not be as rational as you think. We are all subject to cognitive biases that impair the quality of our decisions.

Brian Connelly Professor and Luck Eminent Scholar Department of Management

Mark your calendar for National Jelly Bean Day!

14 HM, Spring 2018

Expecting to receive a few hundred dollars on your 2017 federal and state returns, you excitedly file your taxes electronically and wait for that hefty check in the mail. Except it’s not coming in the mail . . . at least not to you.

Why? A hacker gained access to your

personal records and fraudulently filed your taxes themselves. Who knows? By now, they could be blowing your tax refund on a new sound system for their car.

Last summer’s data breach of the Equifax credit reporting agency compromised personal information of more than 140 million Americans. Social Security numbers. Addresses. Birth dates. Credit histories. All possibly at a cybercriminal’s fingertips. Tax fraud was a problem before. Now, it has the potential to reach epidemic status.

If you are the victim of tax fraud, what can you do? Unfortunately, most are not aware that they have been victims of tax fraud until they have already filed.

At that point, you will need to file a Form 14039—an identity theft affidavit—and provide the appropriate

TransUnion, and Experian. Contacting proof of your identity. Resolution can each agency, one by one, is somewhat take time, so be patient. For what it’s time consuming and each action comes worth, the IRS is also moving toward with a nominal fee, but it’s worth the greater means of protecting your identities with more thorough verification peace of mind. However, you must contact these agencies and unfreeze your codes that you will note on your returns. credit each time you need to open a This is one of the ways the IRS is new account. working to protect your privacy.

Once your credit is frozen, it’s very Whether or not you fall victim difficult for a cybercriminal to open to tax fraud this spring, it’s wise to accounts in your name. take additional measures to protect Lastly, guard your personal information yourself from identity theft. Why is this closely and change passwords frequently important? A 2017 identity fraud study for any online account that you released by Javelin Strategy & Research, might have. a research-based advisory firm, found Identity theft is a growing worldwide that more than $16 billion was stolen problem and the Equifax data breach from 15.4 million US consumers in only opens the door to future potential 2016 alone. problems. One can only speculate how What can you do to protect yourself? many fraudulent tax returns will result If your records were compromised, then from it. Suffice it to say, there will be you should consider registering for one many. Be prepared. of many credit-monitoring services.

Secondly, you can freeze your credit John Jahera reports with each of the major credit reporting organizations—Equifax, Bobby Lowder Professor Department of Finance

e h t g n i v Li Odds are you’ve seen a Salt Life logo on a vehicle or an item of apparel. But what drives the company behind the symbol? Jeff Stillwell, a 1988 marketing graduate, is president of Salt Life. He sat down with Harbert Magazine to discuss how he helped turn a small, fishing-oriented company into a much larger and more diverse lifestyle company, how a strong code of ethics has influenced his leadership, the challenges of building a brand, and other aspects of managing a growing company.

16 HM, Spring 2018

Conversations from the C-Suite Harbert Magazine: You come from a family of businessmen.

Your grandfather owned a barbecue restaurant in Phenix City, Alabama, and your father, Neil, owned a sporting goods store and eventually started a highly successful college sports apparel company, The Game. Are there any specific traits you inherited from them?

Jeff Stillwell: To be successful, you have to work hard every day and work smart. You have to put in the effort. My dad and grandfather would do whatever it took. You don’t necessarily have to be the smartest person, but you have to outwork others and hustle and put in the effort. That’s the key. I tell people I’m never the smartest person in the room, but I like to get in there and work hard. I’ve found that showing up, you’re three-quarters of the way there.

HM: Before college athletic programs took control of licensing apparel, your father started selling branded Auburn hats and shirts at home games. His company [The Game] eventually grew to include other SEC schools and really seemed to take off in the mid-1980s, when you were studying business at Auburn. Pat Dye was the first head coach to wear one of the company’s hats on the sideline.

How involved were you in the business at that point?

JS: I grew up and my dad had the sporting goods stores. When I was 7 years old, if I wasn’t playing sports or at school, I was at work. On Saturdays, I would be selling things in the retail store or sweeping or doing something. It’s the only way I knew to be.

Fast forward—when we started selling things over at the university, selling concessions, and, really, we were the first people to do [novelty sales], I was 13 or 14 years old. Me and some of my buddies would come over [to Auburn] and work. We had six locations and, the first day, at the end of the game, we had sold about $8,000 worth of stuff. After my dad paid for everything, he realized he made a profit of about $2,500. He says, “I’ve got to do more of this.” A handful of years later, we were with Auburn, Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi State, Florida State, Florida—we were at all of these stadiums and every weekend I was working in a stadium.

Fast forward—I go to Auburn and Bo Jackson was here, and I never saw a game. I was 18 years old, I had a key to the stadium.

I would be there at 6 a.m. on Saturday, they would come up with a 22-foot Ryder truck, and we would unload everything. We had about 15 or 16 locations at that time at Auburn and we might do $100,000 [in sales] a game. I had an office in the stadium and then, after me, I had about 90 people [working]. Here I am in business school and I’ve got 90 people I’m in charge of, I’ve got all this cash, and after I would lock up everything, a police officer would go with me and I’d make a giant deposit at the bank.

HM: Did you know from the outset that you would be involved in trying to advance the family business, or was that a decision that came later? Was there a particular point when it all clicked?

JS: What I’d intended to do, and how I started my career, was in sales. My dad kept telling me—and he had a fairly sizable operation at the time—that I needed to get in sales. They made a lot of money and it was hard work, but I was used to hard work.

I graduated on a Friday and started on a Monday. I worked for a sales agency and had several brands—Asics footwear was one of them, I had The Game, and several brands. I did that from ’88 to ’94 and lived in Baton Rouge and then moved up to the Carolinas.

I remember taking over a territory in the Carolinas that was doing $800,000 of revenue a year and when I left in ’93 it was doing $7 million. I had a great career, but my dad calls and says “I want to start a new business and I need you to come home. It’ll be a lot of fun and you’ll get to travel the world.” It wasn’t intended for me.

We always talked about doing something together at some point.

I was 27, and I hadn’t thought about that. I got a phone call and I came home.

HM: Is that where the story of Salt Life more or less begins?

JS: No, we started a little company called Kudzu in 1994. We were making private-label stuff for NASCAR. For the next 10 to 15 years, if you bought a hat with a NASCAR driver on it, there was a 60 to 70 percent chance we made it. Plus we made a lot of stuff for Cabela’s, Bass Pro Shops, and other people. We sold blank headwear to screen printers. In 1998, we bought The Game back from Russell. It went from $86 million in sales [when we sold it to Russell] to $8 million in five years [with Russell owning it].

I’m no rocket scientist, but that’s the wrong direction. They had two or three bookstore accounts left, and it used to be the premier bookstore brand. We built it back up and continued our product label.

We were making baseball caps for Callaway Golf and Ashworth.

I had gone out to a sales meeting for Ashworth and the CEO asked if I had a few minutes. He asked, “You guys ever thought of selling?” I said, “Everything I own is for sale except my wife and my dog.” He ended up making us an offer that was too good to be true. Ashworth sold us to adidas/TaylorMade. I managed to trick everyone along the way and convince them to let me run the company. Delta Apparel (NYSE American: DLA) acquired us in ’09 and I began following Salt Life in late 2010. They were looking for someone to step in. It was a little bitty fishing brand with a name that was so good. I thought it could be a lifestyle brand.

HM: How did you start following it?

JS: With The Game, I was down in Ponte Vedra Beach a lot working with the PGA Tour at some of their properties. We had a licensing deal and did a lot of events. I kept seeing the Salt Life sticker all over and some people I knew from the Tour said, “Have you seen this brand? It’s kind of cool.” When they started looking, they went to people I knew for advice and they called me. One thing led to another and we took over the brand in 2011. We did it the first couple of years as a licensee. After a couple years of test drive, we made the investment to buy it outright.

HM: It seems like your father had those aha moments, and you did as well. You’ve both shown the ability to think about where an opportunity might take you in 5-10 years.

How much of your decision-making in those types of matters is data-driven and how much would you say is instinctive?

JS: I tell people that what little success I’ve had in life, I attribute to being observant. Sometimes I’ll just sit back and watch things.

All I have to do is figure out something before somebody else does. It’s somewhat instinctive to realize this could be something, that [Salt Life] is not just a fishing brand. Soccer moms are just as attached to it as hardcore fishermen.

HM: What’s a typical day like as president of Salt Life?

You’ve mentioned you’re very hands-on in some respects.

Do you sweat the small things across all areas?

JS: For me to be successful and for our brand to be successful, I feel like I have to be involved to a degree. We task someone with a goal and let them run with it, but I’m around 24-7 for anything they need. But I tell them that I reserve the right to check under the hood. I realize now, later in my career, that I can only be real good at a couple things. The most value I will bring to Salt Life will be spending time on product and marketing. If we get any one of those two things wrong, the brand will suffer. I have people a lot smarter than me who handle distribution, accounting, and finance, and all of those things that make the engine run. But there are a handful of things I like to look at that tell me if we’re on the right track or the wrong track.

When we get to financials, I go to the balance sheet first. If I see something off, I can go start asking questions. I will challenge.

The worst thing you can say to me is that we’ve always done it this way. I’ve seen a lot of businesses go broke for always doing it that way. Every couple of years, and our entire staff knows it’s coming and I think they cringe, we say clean sheet of paper. Given software changes and the way our business has evolved—we’re still making hats, shirts, and boardshorts, but our customers change and your shipping changes and logistics change—if we were starting from scratch today, would every process be the same? Let’s go out and detail every single process and challenge ourselves. Are we making the best use of the system? If not, we need to change things. We do it every two or three years.

It’s mind-numbingly boring, but it’s amazing how much you realize that we were doing things less efficiently because we weren’t challenging ourselves enough.

HM: When you came to Salt Life, it was four guys from Jacksonville, Florida. What did you bring to Salt Life that had not been there before?

JS: To me, it was the challenge to make it more than it was. In the beginning, when we got involved, 95 percent of the products sold were hardcore fishing-related. I said we’re going to be a lifestyle brand. We’ll push out some surfing stuff, paddleboarding stuff, relaxing on the beach stuff, more diving things. And people kept saying, why are you doing this? All you need to do is keep printing these fishing shirts and making fishing shorts and we’re going to be good forever. I said, no, we’ll never be as good as we could be.

Fast forward to 2018, less than 20 percent of our revenue will come from hardcore fishing items. It’s more lifestyle. I realized we were becoming a lifestyle brand when we started selling logos and items that weren’t in the original font. Now we sell about 50-50. That tells you it’s not logo-driven, that people are embracing the brand.

Conversations from the C-Suite HM: You’re continuing to grow and have stated the intention to open two to four new retail stores per year.

People find your brand at Belk and retailers in coastal communities. How do you decide the sweet spot for growth?

JS: A lot of people have the thought that it’s about opening up as many doors as possible. You can over-merchandise the market. I look at dollars per door. We’re in about 2,200 doors now. There are certain brands that can support 7,000 and certain ones that can support 3,000. It’s really about how much you’re getting per door.

We have to give our consumer more things to wear. We started with a T-shirt and a hat. Now it’s a T-shirt, a hat, boardshorts, a fishing shirt, or a performance shirt, bags to carry it in, and then long-sleeve shirts or button-down shirts to wear to dinner. Or a combination boardshort and walking short. The balance is finding the right customers that will support the entire line.

HM: You had mentioned the importance of observation in your career. Is that something you believe many executives struggle to do—slow themselves down enough to simply observe from time to time?

JS: Probably that’s one way to look at it. You do have to slow down and be aware of what’s going on. The other thing, and I’ve seen it happen a lot of times, a corporation will rule by committee. I’ve been in meetings where they have their entire ideas for the year and start working down the line. If you have your vision and you know where you want to be and you know your demographic, you don’t need a group of people. All you’re going to do is take a great idea and make it mediocre. Or you’ll make it so complicated you can’t effectively build it.

HM: It sounds like you’re familiar with every aspect of your business, but you will say, “I don’t know how to do that. I’m going to get somebody who knows how to do that.” Was there an event when you realized you could be bigger by doing a bit less?

JS: I don’t know if it was a single instance. I may have just touched the hot stove too many times. I think a lot of it is, and again, I’m blessed to have a group of people who’ve been with me for a long time, I realized maybe I was back there meddling a bit too much.

Give someone a direction, but let them go with it. I’m there if I think they’re about to fall off the cliff. My job is to pull the rope in. But I realized I needed to let them run to the cliff. I don’t like a micromanager, and I can’t imagine anyone does.

My philosophy is I just ask questions. If I go to my distribution center tomorrow, there’s a good chance I will pull a box off the shipping line and see how that product is going out of the warehouse. I can’t let go. I don’t like to micromanage, but I have to know enough about what else is going on to ask the right questions or I’m doing our shareholders and everyone else a disservice.

HM: The theme of this magazine is leadership, ethics, values, and social responsibility. People are looking at a multiple bottom line—what are you doing that promotes betterment of the community and what values does your company have that promote a level of social responsibility?

Over time, that bumps into your code of ethics. Do you have a code of ethics for your business, and how did you come about forming it?

JS: Absolutely. We’ve had to adapt ours. There are several apparel industry standards everybody follows, so it’s pretty easy to adapt.

The list can get quite long, but it’s necessary. When I go to factories in Asia, even though we visit every single factory two or three times a year, I go personally. I walk the floor and I want to make sure it’s something I would be proud to take somebody into. I won’t do business with a factory unless I’ve been there. I want to make sure it’s right. You have to do these things, you should want to do these things. The bigger thing to me is that we’re making a product, a living, off of a community that’s based around water. We have to make sure that if we’re going to make money from that, we have to do right.

HM: Where does that come from?

JS: My internal philosophy as an individual is to give back. If it’s right for your personal life, it’s right for your business life. It’s a fine line for us at times at Salt Life. I could easily have surfers opposing fishermen. We have chosen to support the Roatan Marine Park, the second largest barrier reef in the world and the largest living. I want to make sure it stays living. I dive at so many places and it’s horrible to see [a reef ] bleached out. I want to make sure we give back. That group tries to educate the islanders on how to take care of the reef and not poach the fish. They’re training people to raise honey bees and sell honey and beeswax candles to help offset them not killing and poaching the lobster. It’s a very pristine, beautiful place. I want to make sure that, generations from now, people can see that.

Another group we sponsor is Artificial Reefs International. They go into areas where coral is gone and will sink an artificial reef. The life is there. Coral will grow on something super fast.

HM: Larry Fink, the head of BlackRock, comes out with a letter saying we’re going to invest in companies that are really looking to the long-term because people who invest in us look to the long-term. He suggests we need to worry about the environment and the companies that do this are the companies that are profitable in the long run. Can you react to that?

JS: I think he’s 100 percent accurate. I want Salt Life to be around 100 years from now. But for us to have it and for it to be thriving, we better make sure we take care of these oceans. I remember growing up, there was a period of time in the Gulf there was an area where you couldn’t catch redfish. They were almost decimated.

Now they’re thriving. Who wants to be the person who says they caught the last redfish? I want to leave things better than I found them. HM HM, Spring 2018 19

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The Odyssey of Right

The word oxymoron is formed from two Greek words meaning “sharp” and “dull.” And if you take a look at oxymoronlist.com, right there between “business casual” and “butthead” is “business ethics.” In 2016, a Gallup poll reported that “the only people less ethical than business executives are telemarketers, lobbyists and members of Congress.”

The idea that business can, or does, conduct itself ethically is not widely shared.

So why the bad rap?

Well, there’s the impression that business execs and their companies are all about the buck; that “greed is good,” and that ethics and principles, honesty and integrity, often take a back seat to the singleminded pursuit of the dollar. And that impression may not be far off the mark.

Alexander Wagner, a finance professor at the University of Zurich, maintains that one in seven large public corporations commits fraud every year. Certainly, highly publicized ethical meltdowns like Bernie Madoff and Richard Scrushy, Volkswagen and Wells Fargo, add fuel to this fire. By the way, all the companies that have experienced epic fails have espoused high-minded core values and equipped employees with extensive, detailed codes of conduct. “Communication, Respect, Integrity, and Excellence,” coupled with a 64-page manual that states unequivocally that “Moral as well as legal obligations will be fulfilled in a manner which will reflect pride on the Company’s name.”—that’s Enron. It appears that Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” of capitalism is up to no good.

But before we wholly condemn capitalism and the profit motive, what’s wrong with being focused on the bottom line? If you’ve worked hard for your money and you invest it carefully, trusting that your nest egg will grow, don’t you want someone dedicated and focused on improving that investment? Of course, transgressions like fraud, embezzlement, and insider trading cross the line, but we’ve got laws for that. Shouldn’t companies and execs be allowed to push on the laws a bit?

HM, Spring 2018 21

Think sports for a moment.

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There are rules, but we expect the players and the coaches to push right up against the rules to eke out every bit of competitive advantage. Steroids are a no-no, but Adderall is OK . . . for now.

The law sets some very broad boundaries. You might not agree with a given law, but if you break it, you stand a good chance of being punished. So, is legal, ethical? It’s certainly not in the court of public opinion. Martin Shkreli, former CEO of Turning Pharmaceuticals, raised the price of the drug Daraprim from $13.50 a pill to $750. He reasoned that raising the price of the drug would provide more money for better treatments and would maximize profits and shareholder value.

It’s certainly legal for a company to raise the price of its products and what Shkreli did was no different than what other companies have done. However, Shkreli was vilified and ultimately ousted from his job. Apparently, his critics felt that he failed his social responsibility test and that failure was seen as an intolerable ethical breach.

On reflection, Shkreli commented, “I could have raised it higher and made more profits for our shareholders. Which is my primary duty.” Maybe between reasonable profit and unreasonable exploitation is what we would call “fair,” and maybe we all reacted because what Shkreli did wasn’t fair.

Fair. Ah, there’s a concept. Fairness, quite often, gets all muddled up in issues of equality. Is that $12 jump drive in your pocket one you picked up from work? How about that pen? No big deal, right? It’s not really theft. Doesn’t have any real impact on the bottom line. But in a multi-billion-dollar company where a C-suite exec makes a thousand times more than the $12-an-hour employee, is it fair if the CEO pockets something worth $12,000? 12 bucks or 12,000, we have established what you are. Now we’re just haggling about price.

Fair and its close sibling, ethical, may lie somewhere between reasonable profit and unreasonable exploitation, between a gracious favor and a vulgar bribe, or a courtesy benefit and a thoughtless theft. But discovering that elusive state often proves difficult.

Despite the infamous examples, not all companies and not all business executives are on the wrong side of ethics.

Harvard Professor Joseph Badarocco puts it well: for most companies and execs it’s “not issues of right versus wrong, but conflicts of right versus right.” And figuring out a way to resolve those conflicts when pressured by the competitive nature of business.

Research indicates, and Larry Fink’s recent letter to CEOs bears witness, that companies that operate ethically, that are aware of their obligations, not just to shareholders, but to stakeholders, employees, the community, the environment are companies that perform well in the long run. In fact, a focus on the short run can be a recipe for ethical disaster.

22 HM, Spring 2018

The pressure to hit the quota, to make the goal, can cause companies to cut corners on quality, shade accounting rules, churn or inflate accounts. These transgressions don’t come cheap. They often cost millions. On the other hand, there’s every indication that you can do well by doing good. Why is it so hard?

In 1943, Abraham Maslow proposed a theory of human motivation based on a hierarchy of need. At the bottom of the pyramid are our physiological needs, things like air and water. Above those are safety needs—no threat of physical violence—social needs—the need to belong to a group— and esteem needs —the need for respect. Maslow further characterized these needs as deficiency needs. When one deficiency is met, we become motivated to meet the next deficiency, the next need. At the top of the pyramid, Maslow talked about self-actualization, the desire (as opposed to need) to realize one’sfull potential.

Few executives, few companies, consciously make the decision to be unethical, but often, companies inadvertently create environments that prompt lapses.

Some management researchers have adapted this hierarchy to business. At the most basic level, what does a business need to operate? An employee, a product or service, some capital, a work space, etc. At the next level, safety, it’s steady employees, a stream of revenue, next a community of investors and partners, then brand recognition, etc. You get the idea.

With this hierarchy in mind, it’s understandable that a business struggling with deficiency needs might find it difficult to focus on anything other than doing those things that are necessary to staying in business. Doing business ethically, exhibiting social responsibility, may be great in the long run, but a business has to be in business for a long time to get to the long run. This is not to say that ethics must be secondary to profit, but rather to point out that any discussion of business ethics presupposes that there is a business.

Looking at the individual, ego, ambition, desire, and greed can be significant spurs to performance. And management has systems—raises, promotions, bonuses, commissions—that put these impulses to profitable use. Again, this is not to say that incentives are bad or that they promote ruthless behavior, but rather that professional managers face institutional

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pressures to perform, and just as their athletic counterparts, the desire to excel in an environment of tough competition can place employees, and the companies for which they work, on an ethically slippery slope.

Few executives, few companies, consciously make the decision to be unethical, but often, companies inadvertently create environments that prompt lapses. Is it safe for employees to raise ethical questions without fear of reprisal? Is there too much pressure to reach sales, production, creative targets? Do the company and the managers create goals and policies that are logically consistent, that treat people fairly? Do executives follow the same rules they suggest for the rank and file? Seems clear and easy, but it’s surprising how often those elements get missed.

So that’s what you don’t do. What do you do?

Borrowing from management consultant Patrick Lencioni, set and state your company’s core values. You can’t expect employees to follow the company’s ethical standards if those standards aren’t clearly articulated. This articulation will take some thinking as, ideally, these values are the bedrock on which the codes of conduct and ethical guidelines rest. Core values should never be compromised. Ultimately, these core values should be simple statements, but bear in mind that the very simplicity necessary will make them all the more difficult to craft. When you undertake this task, recognize that you may be shooting at a moving target. Laws change, social responsibilities evolve, markets expand across different cultures, and expectations ebb and flow. You may need a new or expanded set of values to augment the ones you have.

And know that the minute you set, change, or augment core values, you will be met with skepticism. Remember Enron’s “Communication, Respect, Integrity, and Excellence.” These grand values proved to be virtually meaningless. Why are the values you espouse different? Skepticism can be overcome, but it won’t be easy and it will incur some discomfort.

You’ll actually have to live up to your company’s values and expect, demand actually, that your employees do the same.

That consistency applies to the Board of Directors as well as the line worker. It’s not a periodic ethics flu shot. It’s daily reinforcement and practice, from the top down.

Most businesses have value statements, and those that do usually have codes of conduct, but often things go awry when it comes to implementation. Note, there’s a difference between legal compliance and ethical, responsible behavior. The former tells us what not to do, as opposed to the latter, which should point us toward what we should do.

Thus, a code of conduct, grounded in the company’s core values, should provide some practical guide to the resolution of ethical dilemmas. This code must contain clear language on the various common considerations: bribes, benefits received, expenses, entertainment costs, etc. And it should provide some guidance for those dilemmas that cannot be covered by policy.

Admittedly, this is where things get a little squishy. Executives and managers are called on to make decisions about what is

Business success is measured by more than just the financial bottom line, but by environmental, philanthropic, and ethical performance as well.

ethically good and bad, to “do the right thing.” But, in the absence of clear, specific guidelines, what does that mean? And how do you set up clear, specific guidelines for every potential ethical situation? Impossible.

Jeffery Pfeffer, a professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business, has some suggestions. First, sign your work, and ask employees to sign theirs. No plausible deniability. You may not have to sign, literally, but be prepared to state, “This is mine.

I did it. I’m responsible.” Second, expect excellence of yourself and your employees. Third, measure ethical performance. It’s not unusual for a company to have performance metrics for its employees. It is a bit unusual for companies to measure ethics and values performance. With clear values and a defined sense of social responsibility, you can create the metrics to gauge ethical performance. Fourth, openly share what you find about ethical performance and finally, make ethical performance part of employee performance. In other words, hire and fire for character.

These ideas point to an idea that has been gaining ground— that businesses should be measured by more than one bottom line. Harvard Business Review recently named Pablo Isla as 2017’s top CEO. Isla runs Inditex, a retailer which has become Spain’s most valuable company. In a lot of ways, Isla’s choice is unexpected. “Measured on financial returns alone, Isla comes in 18th in our ranking,” says the commentary. “His company’s performance on environmental, social, and governance factors, which count for 20 percent of a leader’s score, propelled him to the top spot.” Wow. And we have another business acronym, CSR: Corporate Social Responsibility. As consumers and employees have exhibited a desire to favor companies with a strong CSR, business success is measured by more than just the financial bottom line, but by environmental, philanthropic, and ethical performance as well.

You could look at these additional metrics as another set of complications for the executive, more rings to shoot through before the target even comes into view. Or you could look at this triple bottom line as a sensible, core business value that promotes a considered, responsible, and above all, ethical relationship to the world in which a business operates. HM

HM, Spring 2018 23

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says O.C. Ferrell, director of the Center for Ethical Organizational Cultures in the Harbert College of Business.

Just as many business decisions are made by teams, so must the ethical conduct of business operations be viewed as a broader commitment that extends beyond the executive suite. It’s the kind of buy-in to a system that coaches seek in their athletic teams.

It’s not enough to simply draft an ethics policy, to file away some bundle of corporate paper that gets no consideration in the boardroom or in the workplace. Nor can executives assume that ethical conduct is no more than applied common sense everyone in the company will understand and follow.

Not unlike coaches of sports teams, effective business leaders must understand how to manage and motivate those who report to them, Ferrell says, and part of that challenge is a responsibility not only for their own ethical conduct, but also that of their subordinates. A code of ethics—in a sense, a playbook—that is clearly explained to employees and modeled by management is a critical element. Beyond the right-and-wrong aspects of an ethics code, it’s also a useful tool that can help identify areas of risk for a company by framing potential business issues.

Ferrell notes that understanding the sometimes subtle differences among terms often lumped together under the umbrella of ethics— or even used interchangeably—is important. The words matter. For example, values are “enduring beliefs and ideals,” and companies can choose them he says, citing Chick-fil-A’s decision not to operate its restaurants on Sundays.

HM, Spring 2018 25

Principles are “non-negotiable, fundamental” aspects of a company.

Social responsibility efforts and community contributions may have their own merits, but they don’t always equate to ethical corporate behavior. Consider the tale of Enron, for example, in which a company with a large and favorable outside-the-office presence was riddled with internal ethical deficiencies that eventually sank the company.

Morals are personal. “Companies don’t have a heart, a soul and a brain,” Ferrell says. “They’re a collection of people.”

Because different people may have different ethical senses, a corporate code of ethics is essential.

Ferrell likens business ethics to a threelegged stool that starts with the good personal character of those associated with the company. The executive or employee who lacks that is more likely to become a “rogue figure” whose actions can endanger the enterprise.

The second leg is an ethics program that communicates shared values. The third leg is leadership that acts as role models for the kind of ethical conduct the company desires and recognizes its obligation to both expect and promote such conduct.

“The ethical leader knows when to intervene, how to coach, how to catch people early when they’re heading off the reservation,” Ferrell says. That’s not always easy; confronting ethics problems can require courage. “What if it’s your best friend or a close colleague?” he says, noting that conflicts of interest often lie at the heart of ethics problems.

Officials at two companies cited by Ferrell as having strong reputations for ethics, Hershey and the health care facilities operator Hospital Corporation of America, say that their ethical expectations are made clear to employees early on, then reinforced throughout their careers with the companies.

“Individuals that join Hershey are informed of its ethical operating environment as part of the onboarding process,” says Sarah Foley, senior manager of global ethics compliance and legal operations. “They are required to complete an eLearning module on the company’s Code of Conduct, which sets forth the compliance expectations of Hershey and informs employees of resources should they have an ethical question or dilemma after joining.”

At HCA, “new employees receive Code of Conduct orientation within 30 days of hire and often within the first several days of their employment,” says Alan Yuspeh, senior vice president and chief ethics and compliance officer.

“This training serves as an introduction not only to our Code of Conduct, but also to our mission and values and our commitments to stakeholders, which are foundational to our ethics and compliance efforts. We also have ethics and compliance officers at every facility who are trained and prepared to address questions or issues employees might have.”

The companies’ codes of conduct also influence their business plans and employee evaluations.

“Hershey’s management team incorporates Hershey’s ethical expectations by reinforcing how important it is for us to watch over every business relationship, transaction and product, and guarantee that our actions always reflect our values,” Foley says.

Executives “consistently reinforce” the principles of the code and “communicate that there are no exceptions” to following the code.

“HCA includes honoring our mission and values in its evaluation process,” Yuspeh says, adding that the company conducts periodic reviews to assess the effectiveness of its ethics program.

Both companies find that solid ethical policies and a commitment to implementing them result in a reputation that is good for the bottom line.

“Studies have shown that consumers want to purchase products and services from a company that operates with established ethical standards,” Foley says.

“Maintaining high ethical standards builds trust with our consumers, which translates into success commercially.”

“We believe that when we put our patients first, then all else, including the financial well-being of the company, will follow,” Yuspeh says. “Likewise, we find ways to make good on our commitments to other stakeholders, most significantly our employees and affiliated physicians.”

It’s been a journey for HCA. In 1997, the company, then known as Columbia/ HCA, pled guilty to 14 felonies and paid more than $1.7 billion in fines for fraud and falsifying Medicare bills. A focused effort to implement strong ethical practices resurrected the company’s reputation.

“That put them at a much higher ethical culture level than they were before the misconduct occurred,” Ferrell says.

“Now, HCA is on the list of the most ethical companies in the world. The rest of the health care industry looks to them as to how to develop a highly ethical company.”

Recognizing the importance of this element of business practice, Ferrell’s center is leading an effort to help students become ethical leaders. The center is developing multidisciplinary materials for Harbert faculty, and students can earn Ethical Leadership Certification, which Ferrell calls “a real credential” that is recognized and valued by potential employers. HM

“Maintaining high ethical standards builds trust with our consumers, which translates into success commercially.�

HM, Spring 2018 27

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28 HM, Spring 2018

That key phrase is not just some random maxim tacked on to a company’s mission statement in order to stay current.

Increasingly, organizations are placing the philosophy at their core. For more than a few, the concept has become both a steady foundation and a catalyst for growth.

“There’s an explanation for the upsurge of this mindset and its place in training future business professionals,” says Michael Robinson, director of Auburn University’s Executive Master of Real Estate Development program: It is arguably the most effective way of operating a thriving business in the 21st century.

Though the model has shifted throughout the decades, “doing well by doing good” has been in practice since the days of Benjamin Franklin, the American founding father credited with coining the phrase.

“The sentiments for the aphorism arose out of the intellectual ferment of 18th Century American Enlightenment, where ideas of liberty, equality, and justice took hold,” Robinson says, adding that the epicenter of the idea’s inception and growth was Philadelphia, at the time the nation’s largest city.

“Franklin, prior to the revolution, had become wealthy, in part, by patenting his inventions and giving access to the public for the public good,” he says. “In this small Petri dish of the Philadelphia community, Franklin was able to see the connections between his growing wealth, the prosperity and well-being of his city, and the donations of his intellectual capital to the community.”

And that idea reverberated through the late 19th to mid-20th century, according to Nancy Koehn, a Harvard Business School professor and historian.

“The arc of history in business is all about companies that had social aspirations as well as commercial benchmarks and interests,” Koehn says in an interview with the Harvard Business Review, citing, among others, china manufacturer Josiah Wedgwood, and food tycoon Henry Heinz, who created company towns for employees, providing housing and other needs, and in the mid-20th century, cosmetics tycoon Estee Lauder, who also took measures to care for her employees.

“All of these entrepreneurs would get very, very high marks today on a CSR index,” she says.

But these leaders didn’t do it for superficial reasons.“ They thought that the kind of business they had, and its role in society, were very much interconnected, so always doing good by society was doing well for their business,” Koehn says.

But Robinson points out that by the late 20th century, that paradigm was all but obsolete.

“Since the rise of large multinational corporations and the move to a global economy, since the 1980s, there has been a precipitous weakening between corporate operations and local and regional communities,” he says.

Films like “Wall Street” and “Glengarry Glen Ross” reflected the new reality with their messages: “Greed is good.” and “Always be closing.”

Robinson says the shift back to “doing well by doing good” has resulted in burgeoning trends including corporate social responsibility, and impact investing, with shareholders and contributions to organizations that emphasize social and environmental impact along with financial return.

Similarly, triple bottom line, often called TBL or 3BL, which divides a company’s accounting framework into social, environmental, and financial components, with sustainable development, which emphasizes avoiding depletion of natural resources, are on the rise.

“It seems that businesses are beginning to return to understanding, as Franklin did, that the welfare of their stakeholders, including employees, directly influences their bottom line of profits and losses, thereby affecting their shareholders,” Robinson says.

Doing well by doing good—realizing the responsibility to give back to society—is a guiding principle and strategic plan of both progressive startups around the world and established businesses such as Starbucks, Land’s End, Ben and Jerry’s, and Whole Foods.

“Business leaders are finding that successful bottom lines are not in conflict with the promotion of social and environmental value, and are learning that they actually have a symbiotic relationship to one another,” says Robinson, who prioritizes the concept in teaching students in the MRED program, a joint venture between the Harbert College and Auburn’s College of Architecture, Design, and Construction.

The students see the concept in action on field trips—a couple of ventures took them to a commercial building in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that earned platinum status in LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) and to the Convention and Exhibition Center in Melbourne, Australia, which earned a 6-Star Green Star rating for its sustainability initiatives.

On these trips, “students hear the same refrains from developers, public-private partnerships, real estate investment trusts, or investment houses: focusing on community enhancement, high performance buildings, health, wellness, and ecological conservation make good business sense,” Robinson says.

These lessons are learned and embraced.

Case in point: Ryan Doyle, a ’12 MRED graduate and now director of oneC1TY Nashville, a sprawling urban community that merges technology-enabled commercial, residential, research and retail activity, is surrounded by teaching hospitals and medical schools and is adjacent to Nashville’s urban core. It’s a kind of utopia founded on the “doing well by doing good” model, constructed for LEED certification, filled with acres of green space for walking, biking, and outdoor music and art events.

It was also a recent destination for MRED students to absorb the concept in action.

Doyle foresees a not-so-distant future in which his Nashville project is the norm. Specifically, he predicts the impact of the built environment on health will become a dominant business concept within the next 10 years.

“Sustainability has built momentum to the point of being an expectation in most circles and measuring the health impact of buildings, transit, and open space to name a few categories will become more typical in the years ahead,” Doyle says. “Certification and measurement models are already being developed.

“Ultimately, this gets back to what consumers want. And I believe technology and other new mediums for gaining awareness and knowledge of the impact we are making on the environment and population health will continue to drive consumers to want healthier development principles,” he says. “If done well, real estate development and investment leaves a legacy for the community to share. It’s a vital lesson Dr. Robinson and our classmates taught me while at Auburn.”

The timing is perfect. The shift resonates with a particular generation: millennials.

“We are seeing the social benefit initiatives of companies being a major consideration in the competition to recruit and retain talent,” Doyle says. “Companies that dig into their communities and develop deep roots through not just philanthropically giving, but integrating their business into workforce development, and foundational civic investments are going to stand the test of time in markets where talent is the resource most necessary to succeed long-term.” HM

Nashville’s oneC1TY development is managed by Ryan Doyle (middle right), a 2012 graduate of Harbert’s MRED program.

In the top photo, Doyle discusses the urban community with Michael Robinson, director of MRED.

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THE

DARK TRIAD 32 HM, Spring 2018

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HM, Spring 2018 33

CEO’s.

Visionary, confident maybe even vain, sometimes overbearing. Focused, if not driven, impulsive. Charismatic. Both superficially charming and casually cruel, certainly not above manipulation, even deceit.

These are the people who’ll tell you to cut a corner or two because that profitable end justifies a lot of questionable means.

These are the manifestations of—psychopathy, narcissism and Machiavellianism. They’re known as the “dark triad.” But some of the dark qualities may actually be necessary to get the job done.

Apple’s iPad met some internal resistance. The screen was too large. The device was too bulky. Apple was reaping the financial rewards from the first iPhone, so why take a chance on rolling out a similar device and calling it an iPad? Because CEO Steve Jobs said so. And he was known to run over a few folks on the way to realizing his vision.

Amazon is the world’s largest online retailer, but it’s also one of the best cloud computing companies in the world. The company spent years of research in developing an infrastructure for cloud computing—enabling consumers to shop easier from their desktops, laptops, or cellular devices. But all members of Amazon’s executive team didn’t originally agree with the strategy.

They didn’t see the value of using cloud computing and big data to expand the way they did business.

CEO Jeff Bezos did.

Today, Apple and Amazon are powerful symbols of corporate USA—built by visionaries confident in their ideas, driven to personal and corporate success, resilient in the face of obstacles.

But are such visionaries psychopathic? Forbes recently reported that nearly 20 percent of CEOs in the U.S. have psychopathic tendencies.

It’s easy to toss around words such as “psycho” as catch-all derogatory terms, but for a more accurate insight, it is useful to understand the series of traits in that “dark triad.” Psychopathy involves a blend of emotional, interpersonal, and behavioral deficits. Narcissism features an overblown, grandiose sense of self-worth and entitlement. Characteristics of Machiavellianism include a superficial charm, ruthlessness, and ready use of deceit and interpersonal manipulation.

As Harbert College faculty discuss below, sometimes aspects of the dark triad are successful in the business world. At Apple and Amazon, having relentless, hard-charging individuals at the helm worked out just fine.

“When you have this personality, you have stronger persuasive power to make sure the company is moving in the direction you want your company to go,” says Lei Huang, Harbert College assistant professor of management. “When narcissistic people have failures, they resist the critiques and naturally think that they will bounce back. When you look at 2008, 2009, and 2010, those three years of severe financial crises, some companies thrived. Many times it was because they had a very confident, yet potentially psychopathic and narcissistic CEO.” Jeremy Mackey, assistant professor of management, agrees that CEOs with psychopathic tendencies can be good for an organization that is focused solely on the bottom line “as long as there is a system of checks and balances in the top

34 HM, Spring 2018

management team to ensure that psychopathic CEOs’ messages are communicated in appropriate ways.”

Mackey notes that such aggressive personality traits are sometimes necessary for businessmen or businesswomen to reach the pinnacle of their careers. “Psychopathic tendencies can be useful for potential CEOs as they climb the corporate ladder because psychopathy is associated with self-promotion, assertiveness and risk-taking—which likely are necessary to elevate a leader to the position of CEO,” he adds. “Psychopathy is also associated with impulsivity and lack of empathy.”

In other words, they have no problem stabbing a back or two along the way. Understudies can feel like numbers rather than people at times. “Psychopathic tendencies likely enable CEOs to view decisions in the workplace as business decisions ahead of personal decisions,” Mackey says. “This can enable them to do what they believe is in the best interest of their organization instead of acting on emotion.”

This paints a picture of a cold human being focused on corporate success and pleasing only his or her board of directors and shareholders.

“These tendencies can harm CEOs’ abilities to build meaningful social relationships,” Mackey says. “Further, psychopathy is associated with bullying and revenge-seeking, so psychopaths might retaliate against those who do not agree with them (‘My Way or the Highway’).”

Huang, however, reports that there are two types of narcissistic CEOs. One steps on subordinates. The other doesn’t. “One type of narcissist is extremely self-centered, extremely confident and demand admiration and respect from people,” he says. “They really do not care what people think. All they care about is their own, personal success.

“The other type of narcissist is really quite interesting. They have all of these qualities, or non-qualities, but they actually care about their reputation among people. They want to associate themselves with positive things.”

Imagine a narcissistic CEO who depends on the success of his or her own employees, but is hated and feared in the corporation. What are the odds that company succeeds? Not good. That’s why, Huang says, “certain tactics” are used by some psychopathic, narcissistic CEOs to boost morale and their own personal standing in the workplace.

“Steve Jobs is the perfect narcissistic example of this,” Huang says. “He had a lot of great ideas, the iPhone, iPad—and in his second term with the company, it was how to handle people. He consulted with his people. He asked them what they thought.

At the end of the day, did he make decisions based on their suggestions? Probably not. But he gave people the chance to speak up.“He was a strategic, smarter, sensitive narcissist. He made people feel better about themselves.”

Huang says some narcissistic, psychopathic CEOs don’t outwardly display the stereotypes with which they are associated.

Like a disingenuous politician fishing for votes, they play to their employees. “Narcissistic leaders sometimes write thankyou notes to employees in a way that makes them feel that their contribution to the company was much larger than it actually was,” he says. “They will exaggerate and use terms and phrases

Feature that emphasize how important the employee’s contribution to the company really was. They use phrases like, ‘You are amazing!’ ‘Your contribution was massive!’ It makes the person feel important and that they mean something. They feel valuable, even if they really aren’t and even if the CEO knows it.”

This CEO manipulates subordinates into believing he or she is personable and charismatic. “A lot of CEOs can be very successful if they are sensitive to their environment, they care what other people think about them and use this to their advantages in order to get their objectives accomplished,” Huang says.

Working with or for a psychopathic CEO is one thing. Doing business with one is another.

Bob Broadway, CEO of The Broadway Group in Huntsville, Alabama, who earned graduate and undergraduate degrees at Harbert College, says it’s best “to stroke their ego.”

He also believes that most CEOs with psychopathic tendencies will not be successful in the long run. Why? They lack the attributes of a great leader: role models, visionaries, integrity beyond reproach, cognizant of character, committed to the organization, and believers in the value of surrounding themselves with good people.

“Most CEOs with psychopathic tendencies are not going to have some of those good things,” he says. “They are probably not a good role model.

They don’t want their employees acting in the same manner and acting like they are. If you’ve got a CEO always seeking attention and wanting recognition, that’s not a company’s end-goal. That’s just a byproduct. If you’re in business to seek out those types of things, you won’t be successful.”

Broadway notes that many CEOs with narcissistic or psychopathic behaviors don’t build good staffs because of their own demeanor. “You’re not going to have a lot of people who will want to follow you,” he says. “Obviously, you want leaders to follow you. In this case, you will wind up having followers follow you, not (future) leaders. You don’t grow that way, and these followers are not going to be your CEOs of tomorrow.”

Some of the world’s greatest and most influential companies have been run by psychopathic CEOs. Some have also run organizations into the ground. Which is best for your organization? What is that fine line between the aggressive, profit-driven, uncaring, pushy psychopath, and simply a great leader?

“Machiavellian CEOs,” Mackey says. “Machiavellians likely engage in many of the same behaviors as psychopaths, but use calculated decision-making instead of impulsive decision-making. They also tend to thrive better in society than psychopaths because they can form relationships with others due to their belief in personal manipulation as the primary key to success.”

Huang says the best bet for an organization’s CEO personality type likely depends on its situation and need.

“If your business is slowly moving forward, then you probably need a very decisive person with a vision for the future to change things,” he says. “If you are already enjoying 20 to 30 percent annual growth, then you might not want any type of disruptive forces coming in.” HM

HM, Spring 2018 35

Feature

36 HM, Spring 2018

Feature

Walking the

Public Relations Tightrope How’s your iPhone battery life doing these days? Is the charge percentage rapidly dwindling? Haven’t you heard? Apple faced lawsuits after it was discovered—and the company admitted—that battery life was purposely reduced as a result of a simple iPhone update.

That’s pretty low, considering people’s lives seemingly depend on a functioning cellular device.

Speaking of cell phone batteries, instead of losing charge, did yours explode? If you had a Samsung Galaxy Note 7, it just might have.

Not only was the product recalled, but also the Consumer Product Safety Commission urged people to discontinue their use and lawsuits followed.

Ever bit into a foot-long Subway sub sandwich? You sure it was actually a foot long? Investigations in 2013 revealed that a number of the sandwiches were actually only 11 inches long. Lawsuits were filed and a nominal class action suit was settled. It was difficult to prove monetary damages because “the evidence was eaten,” an attorney involved in the case says.

Do you have only one Wells Fargo account? If not, did you mean to apply for a Wells Fargo line of credit and open a savings account as well? It was infamously discovered in 2016 that 1.5 million unauthorized deposit accounts and 565,433 credit accounts were opened by the bank from 2011-2016. Talk about a public relations nightmare.

Do major corporations have a conscience anymore?

HM, Spring 2018 37

“Realistically, all major companies will eventually have some type of ethical issue or mistake that will occur,” says O.C. Ferrell, the James T. Pursell, Sr. Eminent Scholar in Ethics at Harbert College. “Any large company or corporation in their annual report will probably report that they have been sued by somebody. It’s almost impossible to operate a large corporation without ethical violations.”

As the leader of a large organization, you’ve got to ask yourself: “Have we been completely honest with our clients?” “If not, how do we fix this?” “What about our reputation: How can we save it?” “Are we active stewards in the community?” “Do we align ourselves with political policies, ideologies or candidates that might negatively impact business?”

After all, brand value and connection with clients are the greatest assets of an organization.

Organizations perceived to be guilty of ethics breaches or deceiving customers can also become victimized themselves. What about rogue employees? “Walmart has two million employees,” Ferrell says. “Can you imagine having two million employees and not have any one of them engage in misconduct?”

Another factor isn’t intent, but ignorance. Power brokers high atop an office building might not realize the corners cut by their suppliers’ sub-contractors, the less-than-standard quality produce shipped by farming companies overseas, or perhaps illegal labor practices. How can companies put better reins on their supply chains in relation to the environmental footprints left behind?

“All environmental issues begin with strategic planning,” says Glenn Richey, the Raymond J. Harbert Eminent Scholar and Professor in supply chain management. “Company partners can’t survive with competing values. Companies need to develop governance metrics that set expectations quantitatively, and transparency needs to be achieved via visibility in strategy and traceability of processes.”

Beth Davis-Sramek, Gayle Parks Forehand Professorship in the Department of Systems & Tecnology, points out that consumers also play a role in carbon footprints. “Consumers demand variety and convenience—at a low cost,” she says. “The goal for most companies is to minimize their footprint while still meeting their strategic goals and meeting customer requirements.

“Patagonia, in particular, has pushed the apparel industry to look for innovative solutions for environmental challenges.

However, Patagonia’s business model can more effectively leave a smaller carbon footprint because they have purposely limited their own growth. They can do this because they serve a niche market of customers and they can charge very high prices. As long as customers want low-cost products and as long as they want to fill their life with ‘stuff ’, damage to the environment is likely.

Companies generally get the blame, but ultimately, it’s consumers who are driving it.”

Companies, indeed, are learning that they must be corporate citizens. Harming resources that allow people in markets to thrive kills spending power, which thwarts economic growth.

“Because of science and technology advances, as well as improved visibility into global supply chains, executives have more information about natural resources and the state of long-term global supply of both natural and human capital,” Davis-Sramek says. “Rather than the combative and adversarial relationships of

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the past, we are seeing significant strides in collaborative initiatives between companies, NGOs (non-governmental organizations), and governments to reduce the environmental football that is a natural result of global commerce. Being green is just good business.”

Some mistakes, whether they harm the environment or occur in today’s growing cyber-world, are oversights or neglect. Take the case of Equifax and its infamous data breach. Cyber risk is another threat to corporate and public trust. “There is so much happening with the cloud, with data security, and information that companies are holding on their employees or customers,” says Linda Ferrell, Department of Marketing Chair at Harbert College. “You get these stealth attacks from the outside. These companies understand what the risks are. But the people who are trying to penetrate their systems are getting much smarter.”

The media has uncovered a corporate scandal, or alleged violation of consumer trust. What do you do?

“The first thing you have to do is figure out exactly what happened,” says Dave Ketchen, Lowder Eminent Scholar in Management. “Because the initial reports might not be completely accurate. It’s like when there’s a plumbing problem in your house.

You need to figure out what’s wrong before you go about fixing it.”

The best course of action, according to Tara Wilson, CEO of the Fort Worth, Texas-based Tara Wilson Agency, is for organizations to immediately step up and take responsibility.

“It’s not a good idea to wait even one day to allow others to write your narrative,” says Wilson, a 1997 Harbert College graduate in finance and former senior financial adviser at Merrill Lynch who founded her experiential marketing and public relations firm in 2015. “Take ownership of the issue as swiftly as possible. Admit to having made a mistake and offer a genuine explanation as to what happened. Everyone experiences failure and the worst thing to do is point fingers and shift blame.”

Wilson says that once an organization acknowledges the issue, then it should immediately take the position of offering solutions to fix the problem. She also suggested that a company hire crisis management or public relations experts who can craft and manage messages around the issue, and your company’s course of action to resolve it.

“If a corporation steps forward, takes responsibility for a public failure, accepts criticism and provides a solution, then earning back trust and a leadership position in the marketplace might happen naturally over time,” she says. “If consumers believe a company, or brand they love, is being earnest and compassionate, they will likely continue to support its products. Being authentic and staying true to your company’s mission and values will get you back on track.”

Ketchen noted that some issues might not warrant a full-out public relations defense campaign. “If it’s relatively small, then ignore it and it will go away,” he says. “You see that a lot. The attention span of the media is so short these days that if you’re the bad guy today because your foot-long subs are only 11 inches, tomorrow there will be some other thing—especially given the divisiveness of society today. Nobody stays in the headlines for very long.

“You could actively attack the problem, but if you marshal too many resources, then it begins to look like ‘thou protesteth too much,’” he says. “By throwing millions of dollars at accusers who have relatively unvetted claims, you are basically pleading guilty and throwing gasoline into a fire.”

Organizations don’t just make money.

Sometimes they give it back.

Corporate philanthropy can be viewed as a responsibility to a community, or an excellent PR move. According to the National Philanthropic Trust, corporations made $18.6 billion in charitable contributions in 2016, a 3.5 percent increase from 2015. Pharmaceutical giant Gilead Sciences led all Fortune 500 corporations in charitable giving with $446.7 million in 2015.

Other top corporations included Walmart ($301 million), Wells Fargo ($281.3 million) and Goldman Sachs ($276.4 million).

So, corporations do have a conscience after all?

“Philanthropy should be part of a company or brand’s DNA if its genuine or driven by its top leaders,” Wilson says. “A charitable cause aligns and energizes a company, while building an internal culture that employees can rally around.” Wilson also says that corporate charities can also “serve as the public face of a company and signify what it stands for in the community.”

Is the giving sincere, or an advertisement? People can look at it two ways, Ketchen says.

“It all comes down to whether you’re a pessimist or an optimist,” he says. “If you’re a pessimist, you’re going to be cynical about it. If you’re an optimist, you’re going to say that they do it because they recognize that they have the ability to make improvements that most people don’t have. They have resources at their disposal that the man or woman on the street does not have, so they choose to take on those responsibilities. But if you’re doing it for the wrong reasons, it comes off as insincere.”

And that can be a PR nightmare.

“Consumers are very sophisticated and intelligent,” Wilson says. “If a brand is behaving disingenuously, it will be transparent to consumers. If it isn’t sincere, consumers might stop supporting a brand and distance themselves either emotionally, or with their dollars.”

O.C. Ferrell has another point of view. “Very often, social responsibility and helping the community is viewed as strictly philanthropic—that the way you do good is you give rather than asking yourself, ‘How can we really make a difference in society through our business operations?’ There are other ways you can be more involved. Have your company do volunteer work or do things that incorporate social responsibility into the operations of the business.”

Your favorite beverage company was touted for giving millions to charity, but then it aligned with something against your political beliefs. Perhaps it donated funds to the pro-choice movement or channeled campaign dollars to a controversial politician. For corporations, is getting involved in politics a risky game?

“As a CEO, if you’re supporting an unpopular elected official, I would expect people to voice their opinions,” Wilson says. “You might even anticipate backlash as people are unpredictable. They vote with their dollars and if they feel that their personal values no longer align with a company or brand they once admired, then they might cease to buy that company’s products or support them in the future.”

Ketchen says it might be best for some top corporations to remain vanilla when it comes to politics. “But in the end, everybody’s money is green, whether you’re a Democrat or Republican.” Ketchen cites President Teddy Roosevelt, who battled powerful corporate trusts. “Teddy Roosevelt didn’t have Twitter where he could get on there and bash trusts, call them sad, pathetic and evil, in 140 characters or less.”

Too bad Roosevelt didn’t have an iPhone, which leads us back to Apple and those dwindling batteries. To regain trust in the marketplace, Apple has offered $29 iPhone battery replacements for those affected. The retail price for an iPhone battery is $79.

“Apple was brutally honest,” Linda Ferrell says. “I think that’s amazing.” HM

HM, Spring 2018 39

Research

Harbert College researcher says algorithms hold key to fighting fake news

T

he term has been invoked by everyone from the president to Pope Francis. You’ve seen examples of it on social media in the form of memes promoting conspiracy theories or stories shared from websites of dubious origins. We’re talking, of course, about “fake news.”

Once the provenance of Weekly World News and other supermarket tabloids (we miss Bat Boy), pseudo news now resembles a pandemic, spread by bots, propagandists, and the gullible via Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms.

Fake news may or may not sway elections, depending upon which reports you believe, but there’s no denying its ability to move markets and threaten brands large and small.

Last year, cryptocurrency platform Ethereum lost $4 billion—20 percent of its market value—after social media users fanned a false rumor that one of its co-creators had died in a car crash. Similarly, Starbucks took quick action to shut down a false promotional campaign that emerged from 4chan’s online mischief-makers before it could cause any financial damage. These days, the potential exists for artificial intelligence to be fooled by artificial news as well. When a false story suggesting Google planned to buy Apple for $9 billion circulated on the Dow Jones Newswire, Apple’s stock price experienced a momentary surge thanks to trading controlled by computer algorithms that scan Twitter and news headlines for insights.

“Vigilance and speed of response are essential in fighting fake news,” Signal Media founder David Benigson says. But what if companies and news consumers didn’t have to be reactive combatants?

That’s where Harbert College business analytics associate professor Ashish Gupta enters the fray. Gupta and Harbert graduate students have been building a large repository of Twitter data—nearly 4 terabytes thus far—and taking that “treasure trove of data” to develop algorithms that flag falsities. “Fake news is a controversial topic,” Gupta says, “but it’s worthy of research and consideration.”

Gupta is interested in patterns rather than politics, and using “deep learning” to unmask untruths. Gupta says API— application, programming, and interface—tools help eliminate “noise” (advertisements and comments) from social media postings as a means of determining veracity. The analysis of “native language” identifies tell-tale rhetorical signs—construction of the message, certain phrases—that can flag a tweet as a purveyor of fake news.

According to the Pew Research Center, 64 percent of US adults say fabricated news stories cause confusion about the basic facts of current events and issues. While 39 percent feel confident they can recognize fake news, 23 percent admit to having shared a false story.

Gupta’s work may provide two outcomes—providing companies with a new way to protect their reputations and bottom lines, and producing better-informed social media users.

Many Happy

Returns

Thirty days! Wow! That’s plenty of time to make sure those leather Cole Haan wingtips are the perfect fit, the Kate Spade handbag you bought for your wife’s birthday is precisely the one she wanted, or that new Star Wars video game functions properly with your teen’s PlayStation.

If not, Amazon—the online retail giant—will provide a full refund.

The world of online shopping is growing, whether it’s Amazon, Walmart, or otherwise. In fact, Forrester Research predicts that online sales in the US will account for 17 percent of all retail. Between 2010 and 2016, Amazon’s North American sales leapt from $16 billion to $80 billion. Obviously, more people are finding it convenient to shop from a desktop—or perhaps a smart phone. But you can’t try on a dress in front of a computer . . . or shoes, or jeans, etc.

In their co-authored paper, “Return Time Leniency in Online Retail: A Signaling Theory Perspective on Buying Outcomes,” supply chain management associate professor Shashank Rao, management professor Brian Connelly, and business analytics associate professor Kang Bok Lee, reveal that extended product return time policies attract more customers and cultivates customer trust. Their work was published by Decision Sciences, an elite journal.

Imagine . . . you sell a product, give the buyer more time with said product—and profit from your generosity.

“It can be demonstrated that there are ancillary benefits to the retailer liberalizing the return policy,” Rao says.

“We not only know that people are more likely to buy— but also that people are willing to pay more. You can sell the same item for a higher amount by liberalizing a return policy than if you tried to sell it with a very stringent return policy. The argument that comes out of this is—if you are a retailer—you could make money off of a liberal return policy.”

30

day

Why is this important? Rao says that prior research has revealed that more than 66 percent of shoppers pay attention to an online retailer’s return policy before making a purchase—making the policy an important marking tool.

Purchase situations between buyers and sellers are asymmetric. In other words, a seller has a product and obviously knows far more about that product than the buyer, who is peering at the product through the lens of a computer monitor. They cannot touch it. They cannot hold it. They cannot try it on. They can only hope the product description meets their expectations.

But longer return policies establishes the signal of transparency. If you don’t like it, you have plenty of time to return it.

“This liberal (extended) return policy sends a signal to the buyer that says, ‘You know what . . . maybe this is a product where I don’t need to be worried because the seller doesn’t have anything to hide,’” Rao says.

HM, Spring 2018 41

Research

Does more monitoring mean more fraud?

Ever deliberately instructed your children not to do something, and they did it anyway? Or perhaps you’ve noticed a few brazen drivers who have left their vehicles in front of a “no parking” sign?

Rules are made to be followed, but policy manuals and codes of ethics might be disregarded. We’d like to think that strong governance can deter fraud and other acts of malfeasance, but it doesn’t always work that way. In fact, research finds that it can have the opposite effect among top managers and CEOs. Brian Connelly, Luck Eminent Scholar of Management in the Harbert College, co-authored an award-winning paper that

42 HM, Spring 2018

reveals top managers may be more likely to engage in financial misconduct when facing stringent oversight.

“When people trust us, we are intrinsically motivated to behave appropriately toward them,” says Connelly, whose co-authored paper earned the 2017 Fraud Impact Award presented by the Houston, Texas, Chapter of Certified Fraud Examiners. “The problem comes when people trust us, but then monitor us closely.

This sends conflicting messages about trust, and robs us of our intrinsic motivation to behave appropriately. As a result, too much monitoring backfires because we resent the monitoring.”

Simply put, this changes the nature of CEOs’ motivation for doing the right thing. When we do the right thing because Big Brother is watching, we might give in to temptation and run amok when Big Brother turns his head. In contrast, when

we do the right thing for intrinsic reasons, Big Brother need not worry. Connelly says the job of a director is comparable to that of a parent because both are seeking the appropriate “balance between monitoring and autonomy.”

Connelly and his co-authors collected governance data from all S&P 1500 firms from 1999-2012 using a variety of accounting, auditing and securities agencies.

Connelly says he once asked Andy Fastow, former chief financial officer at Enron, whether he found it surprising that increased monitoring could lead to increased fraud. “He said that as monitoring increases they find more cases of fraud, but that doesn’t mean that more fraud is occurring—they are just finding what they are looking for,” Connelly says.

“Pick up the Wall Street Journal any day of the week and you will read about tremendously powerful shareholders. People like Carl Icahn, Warren Buffett, and Ralph Whitworth. These institutional investors have CEOs shaking in their boots. Over the past two decades or so, institutional investors have become the most powerful people on the planet. We wanted to examine some of the fallout of having these people looking over the shoulders of CEOs.” The paper, “External Corporate Governance and Financial Fraud: Cognitive Evaluation Theory Insights on Agency Theory Prescriptions,” has been published by the Strategic Management Journal.

Mission In Action

Accounting alum, MAcc students reach out to those less fortunate Thomas Stallings, a 2016 School of Accountancy graduate, serves underprivileged children in a small village in Zambia. He teaches business studies to ninth-graders and works as controller for Lifesong, a mission-oriented organization. The Montgomery native passed up a job offer at a Birmingham accounting firm for the opportunity to serve others.

“To care for orphans and widows in their affliction (James 1:27) is something that weighs heavily on us and is something that we feel called to do,” says Stallings, who is joined in Africa by his wife, Kathryn.

But Stallings isn’t the only member of the Harbert College School of Accountancy family to help those in need. Fifty-nine Master of Accountancy students spent a week last December in Santiago, Chile, where they spent time with schoolchildren and upgraded a playground, and also raised $8,900 for air conditioners to be installed at a school.

“Reaching out and contributing even the smallest amount of time or resources can have a big impact on someone’s life,” says MAcc student Erika Goodwin, from Aiken, South Carolina.

“No matter who you are, or what you’ve experienced in life, participating in projects like these creates a new and different perspective that serves as a unique learning opportunity.”

Stallings considers his mission work in Africa rewarding and taxing.

“It is rewarding because it is exciting to see real change in children’s lives as they learn to read or graduate from high school as well as knowing that what we do is breaking the poverty cycle by teaching real skills and offering hundreds of jobs,” he says.

“It is taxing because these are real people with real suffering. You have to operate knowing that every decision you make has a direct impact on a family already living in poverty.”

Stallings says that many villagers live in modest dirt or brick houses built very close to one another. “The unemployment rate is 80 percent and those who do have jobs must support sometimes as many as 15 family members.” The result: poor health conditions and, often, illiteracy. But Stallings is hoping to change that.

“Our program provides opportunities to help the people here,” he says. “We provide them with two meals a day, a free Christian education and full medical care.”

Children at the Liceo Violeta Parra School near Santiago, Chile, had a home to learn in. However, they did so in stifling heat.

That’s why Harbert’s MAcc students raised thousands to provide air conditioning to classrooms.

“It will make a huge difference toward their learning environment,” says Kerri Inger, assistant professor, one of five School of Accountancy faculty members to make the trip. “When it’s sweltering hot, students can’t concentrate. Students can’t pay attention when they are trying to learn in a sauna.”

Inger relished watching MAcc students interact with children who had not received attention from a first-world country.

“Watching them will melt your heart,” says Inger.

“We wanted to make a good impression for not just Auburn, but for America, too,” Inger says. “A lot of these children had never had exposure to Americans. This trip was a good cap on a five-year Auburn experience. Helping others is important, and that’s a great takeaway from the Auburn education. It’s part of the Auburn Creed.”

HM, Spring 2018 43

Entreprenuership

New Business Incubator at Heart of Auburn’s Entrepreneur Ecosystem

A

thletes exercise not only because they enjoy it, but also because they want to reach peak physical condition in order to be the best at their respective sport. But there is only so much athletes can achieve on their own at the gym. A strength and conditioning program, on the other hand, provides the structure and mentoring necessary to reach their full potential.

The same thing can be said about young entrepreneurs. The Tiger Cage Accelerator and Incubator—a 2,800-square-foot facility at the Auburn Research Park— helps students bring their business ideas to life and flex their entrepreneurial muscles.

“Past students have started some incredible companies such as Bellhops and Back Forty Beer Company. But with the structure and mentoring provided via the accelerator and incubator, student entrepreneurs will be better positioned to maximize their achievements and to do so more quickly,” says Dave Ketchen, Lowder Eminent Scholar in Management and Research Director of the Lowder Center for Family Business and Entrepreneurship.

Entrepreneurship has become much more than a major at Auburn University. Through growth of the annual Entrepreneurship Summit and Tiger Cage student business pitch competition—and now the Accelerator and Incubator—one could say the university is cultivating an entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Today, students with business ideas moving forward—some who have participated in the Tiger Cage and some who have not—have an incubator to help their businesses grow.

“What we wanted to do was provide an open, collaborative environment for all Auburn students to work on their business ideas and provide some structure 44 HM, Spring 2018

for our student entrepreneurs,” says LaKami Baker, managing director of the Lowder Center for Family Business and Entrepreneurship. “By providing formal space for the students, we help them legitimize their businesses while providing some guidance so they can advance through the different stages of the entrepreneurship process.”

The facility, which opened in October 2017, has already made an impact. Four successful startups now call it home.

“The accelerator gives me 24/7 workspace access in an excellent location,” says Harrison Evola, CEO of FetchMe, a mobile app-enabled grocery and food delivery service. “I can meet with employees, and we have more than 15 ‘Fetchers’, so that is no easy task. I am able to print, have meetings and interview—all in a new, beautiful facility.”

Chris Maurice, a senior finance major in the Harbert College who co-owns digital currency exchange business Yellow Card Financial, believes programs and facilities like the Tiger Cage Accelerator and Incubator will create a boon for future Auburn entrepreneurs.

“It’s just a matter of time until Auburn is at the forefront of schools here in the United States that you come to because you know that you can do something big on the world stage,” says Maurice, whose team won $25,000 last April at eFest—a national business pitch competition in Minneapolis, Minn.—and recently finished second in the national finals of the Global Student Entrepreneurship Awards in Dallas, Texas. “As we continue to promote entrepreneurship around the world, we’ll bring in more talent and continue to grow. Maybe we’ll have the next (Mark) Zuckerberg.” The Accelerator

and Incubator received a financial shot in the arm last December when 1982 Harbert College alumnus Benny LaRussa and his wife, Lynn, created a permanent $1 million endowment toward the programs. The endowment will double as part of Raymond Harbert’s challenge match initiative, increasing the total to $2 million. The gift will support the development of a summer accelerator program, which will help Auburn student entrepreneurs fine-tune their business concepts, perform customer discovery, validate business models, and attract investors. The program will also include weekly lectures, team pitches, and mentorship.

“If we are trying to nurture students to become successful entrepreneurs, we have to work with them through the whole cycle,” says Lou Bifano, Director of Entrepreneurship Strategy at Harbert College. “We start out with education and training. We provide them with resources through the incubator and accelerator program. We give them access to early-stage funding with business plan competitions. But we don’t want to dump them out and say, ‘Good luck’ once they graduate.”

Bifano stresses the importance of establishing relationships within the business community and local investors so Auburn’s young entrepreneurs can find the resources they need to take the next steps in the progression of their companies.

“Otherwise, they are going to leave and move to an area where they can access those things,” he says. “We will have invested in their success, but we will not have had the opportunity to benefit from their success in terms of job creation and economic development.”

With Your Dollar

KPMG-supported boot camp will sharpen accounting students Accounting is the language of business and a sound business education requires students, regardless of their majors, to be at least conversant in it. Even, or perhaps especially, those who aren’t accounting majors need to understand basic accounting principles.

E

very Harbert College student is required to take Principles of Financial Accounting. For many of the 1,800 or so students who tackle the course each academic year, getting that credit is a challenge. The course typically has high withdrawal and failure rates, says Jennifer MuellerPhillips, director of the School of Accountancy. “That lets us know that students in general struggle to learn accounting.”

The struggles persist as students work to move from the initial accounting course to Intermediate Accounting, which is required of Finance majors as well as Accounting majors.

Faculty members Jennifer Cornett and Lisa Miller noticed “big gaps” in performance among the roughly 600 students moving into the second course, Mueller-Phillips says, which led to a “boot camp” approach aimed at bolstering students’ grasp of fundamentals.

“The first course is tough enough, but many students were really struggling in the second course,” she says. “The faculty members saw the need for an intervention.”

That came in the form of an intensive review of the material taught in the first course, delivered in three-hour sessions over three nights. “We believe it is helping students,” Mueller-Phillips says. “Students are grateful that these faculty members are spending this time with them to help them be successful.”

As valuable as these sessions are, faculty began to recognize that that their utility could be enhanced with technology that makes the review and instruction available to students any time and repeatable as many times as a student needs to solidify understanding of the material. “Interactive presentation can be more appealing than textbook or lecture presentation, especially for students who learn better with interactive materials,” she says.

The idea was pitched to accounting giant KPMG, which provided a $250,000 commitment. Combined with a Harbert Matching Grant, that established the KPMG Endowment for Instructional Excellence.

Harbert’s Media Production Group is developing the material for the boot camp program.

Students in the initial accounting course can benefit from the boot camp as well, Mueller-Phillips says. “After about the midway point of the first course, this can be helpful to those students. It can help them pass finals, for example.”

KPMG’s investment in the School of Accountancy is also an investment in its own future, she says. “This gets students— their future recruits—off to a good start.”

For those who wonder why students who don’t plan to be accountants should study accounting, Mueller-Phillips says it’s about decision-making. “To make good business decisions, they need to understand basic accounting, how the dollars relate to the decisions they’re making for the company. A lot of decisions come down to accounting information.”

You have to speak the language.

HM, Spring 2018 45

Alumni Notes

1950s Frank McDaniel (`59, business administration) serves as operating partner for Big Spring Lake Golf, LLC. In 2017, he completed a two-year term as chairman of the Alabama Men’s Hall of Fame board. He also earned the Hinton Mitchem Economic Development Award for Excellence.

Thomas Steve Tucker (`56, business administration) is retired after a career as a medical and pharmaceutical sales representative with GlaxoSmithKline. One of his grandchildren will enroll at Auburn in the fall.

J. Ray Warren (`58, economics) is retired after a career that included 27 years as a claims superintendent for State Farm and 15 years with the State of Alabama Department of Finance. He also retired from the Army National Guard after 37 years, completing his service as a colonel.

He remains active, working part-time with his wife and adult children in a cotton and peanut farming operation.

projects include developing a master plan and new buildings for the Auburn Research Park. He and his wife, Dale, recently celebrated their 50th anniversary.

an economics instructor and chair of the Division of Business, Mathematics, and Science. He remains active with St. James Episcopal Church and enjoys life on Lake Martin.

1960s W.T. David Abbott (`69, business administration) is a partner with VT Growth Partners in Blacksburg, Virginia.

He enjoys restoring classic British cars and working with the Boy Scouts of America.

Gary K. Beasley (`67, MBA) retired in 1999 as division controller with ConAgra Foods after 30 years of service. He has been married for 52 years and enjoys boating, fishing, and visiting with his three children and four grandchildren.

John David Glenn (`68, business administration) is “gloriously retired” and is completing the last few remaining items on his “bucket list.” He has eight grandchildren “and a couple of God grands.” He has been happily married for 34 years. His hobbies include playing golf, fishing, and going on cruises.

Robert J. Dow (`66, business administration) is Self-Employed as an appraiser and broker in Hoover, Alabama.

He has served as an appraiser for most of the banks in the Southeast for 46 years.

Hank Miller (`64, business administration) is retired, but stays busy as a volunteer with the San Francisco VA Medical Center and Extrafood.org.

John A. Reichley (`62, business administration), twice retired from the US Army, now describes himself as “totally retired.” He earned Leavenworth, Kansas’ Citizen of the Year Award in 2013. He serves as a senior volunteer at the National World War I Museum and Memorial in Kansas City, Missouri, logging more than 2,000 hours a year. He has also been writing two columns per week for the Leavenworth Times for the last 32 years.

Larry Fillmer (`69, business administration) serves as executive director of the Auburn Research and Technology Foundation. His current

James M. Nix, Jr. (`68, business administration; `70, MBA) is retired from Central Alabama Community College in Alexander City, Alabama. He served as

Kermit E. (Pat) Reid (`63, business administration) retired from his role as president and manager of his family business, Reid, Inc., in Waycross, Georgia.

Influential Penick makes difference on and off stage He spent 36 years as an executive in the risk management and insurance industry, taught a class for Auburn freshmen, and was president of the Atlanta Auburn Club. But to his grandchildren, he’s also Mr. Hapgood—Peter Parker’s shop class teacher in the recent blockbuster, “Spider-Man: Homecoming.”

“I’m not doing this for the money,” says the charismatic John Penick, 76, who didn’t begin acting until a few years ago when students pleaded with him to take a chance. “I’m doing this because I really enjoy it. Plus, my grandkids enjoy seeing me. They told all of their friends, “My grandfather was in “Spider-Man!” Penick, a 1967 Harbert College of Business graduate and Kennesaw, Ga., resident, spotted an “auditions Tuesday” sign in the window of a Cartersville, Ga., theater and took former students up on their advice. “The name of the play was ‘Arsenic and Old Lace.’ I went up there, and lo and behold, I’m in that play,” he says.

After acquiring an agent, Penick’s star was on the rise, earning him parts in small productions. “Then all of the sudden my agent calls me and says, ‘I’ve got you an audition for “Spider-Man”,’” he says. “They read your resumé and it says that you were a college teacher. A month and a half later, they gave me the part.”

Though Penick isn’t a web-slinger like his masked co-star, he chooses to cast a web of influence upon others.

“When I was President of the Atlanta Auburn Club, a young man from Andalusia, Alabama, called me and says, ‘Mr. Penick, I just graduated from Auburn and nobody wants to give me a job,’” Photo credit: SONY Pictures Penick recalls. “I says, ‘Hold it right there, young man. Let me tell you something. Nobody wants to give you a damn thing in the business world. You’ve got to earn it.

You’ve got to command respect. You’ve got to bring value to the situation.’”

Penick knows a thing or two about how business operates. After all, he retired as a vice president from Crawford and Company.

“If you’re looking for a job you’ve got to bring something different to the party,” he says. “When you go to that interview, don’t go in there needing a haircut, chewing gum and needing a shine on your shoes. That shows disrespect. You’ve got to blow the socks off of somebody. Do your research on the company.”

ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT

“My agent says there are not a lot of old ducks around town doing this stuff and have a personality,” he says. “In the last two weeks, I’ve done 14 auditions.”

He even suggested that job prospects make potential employers an offer. “Tell them, ‘Let me come to work for you for 30 days and you pay me nothing,’” he suggested. “‘At the end of the 30 days, you can evaluate me and I’ll be evaluating you. Then we can see where we need to go from there.’ Command their recognition and bring something new to the table. Show how you can bring that organization value. I guarantee if you show value, you’ll get a job.”

Penick continues to show value to the film industry. “My agent says there are not a lot of old ducks around town doing this stuff and have a personality,” he says. “In the last two weeks, I’ve done 14 auditions.”

He will co-star this year in “St. Agatha,” a psychological horror movie.

HM, Spring 2018 47

Traweek Dickson Sr., ‘sets the standard’ for hard work Traweek Dickson didn’t become CEO and president of one of the South’s largest auto collision repair chains by coincidence.

It took a lot of work—hard work—to borrow a line from the Auburn Creed.

“You’re not going to be successful if you don’t work hard,” says Dickson, a Montgomery resident and 1977 Harbert College of Business graduate who heads 60 Joe Hudson’s Collision Centers. “There may be that rare businessman who can cut deals off of his yacht and he doesn’t have to work hard, but that isn’t the real world.

Most people who are successful, most of the things that they have done is that they have outworked everybody else.”

Traweek Dickson Jr., who earned an entrepreneurship degree from the Harbert College in 2016 and handles the business’ real estate and acquisitions, says his father “sets the standard.”

“My dad is the hardest-working person I know and anybody who has worked for or with him has seen the same thing,” he says.

“While he’s tough on everybody, he wants you to do the right thing and is the fairest person as long as you are doing and get the job done. I am there to learn, and learn with the understanding that not all times we are going to agree on everything. But at the end of the day, I know Traweek Sr. has my best interest in mind and wants me to be the best businessman I can be.”

Traweek Jr.’s brother, Cameron, a 2013 Harbert College graduate in business management, agrees. “When I say he’s the

hardest-working person I know, that’s not an exaggeration,” he says. “It’s almost like he enjoys it too much. We used to laugh when we all lived at home about when it rained because my dad would start organizing everything in the house because he had to have something to do.”

Dickson Sr., originally from rural Lowndes County, Alabama, credits his work ethic to his alma mater.

“When I got to Auburn, the business school was in the process of getting accredited,” he says. “So we were on a seven-point scale. There wasn’t a lot of room to mess up.

You had to get a 93 to get an A, and I was all about making an A, so I studied all of the time. If I got one thing out of Auburn, it was a work ethic because I didn’t go in there with one.”

Members of Dave Ketchen’s entrepreneurship class were given lessons from Dickson last fall.

“He offered three takeaway pieces of advice to aspiring entrepreneurs,” says Ketchen, Harbert College’s Lowder Eminent Scholar. “He stressed that while trying to build a business, you will inevitably encounter some shifty characters and they must be avoided. Even more important, however, is not to be a shifty character yourself. Also, be patient. It took him quite a while until he found his niche. Don’t be discouraged if you are two or three years out of school and everything has not yet come together.”

He also instructed students to be conservative with their money.

“The only way to become wealthy is to spend a lot less than you earn,” Ketchen says. “He’s met a lot of doctors and lawyers who make a lot of money but spend it all.

Wise people set big sums aside in savings.”

Dickson purchased his shop in 1989, partnering with Montgomery businessman Joe Hudson. Within the past three years, the business has thrived—growing locations from 23 to 60 with repair centers in six states from Florida to Texas. In 2014, their organization was recapitalized by Carousel Capital, a private equity firm from Charlotte, NC Joe Hudson’s Collision Center has since been on a growth plan to add 10 locations a year over the next several years.

With sons and other family members in management positions, Dickson says disagreements are rare. “None of us do the same thing,” he says. “Traweek Jr. is learning the real estate, growth part of the business. My brother is an estimator. My son-in-law is just beginning to manage a store. Cameron managed the Auburn store for a while and now he’s over 12 stores. It’s not like we’re a family sitting at the table trying to make a decision together or split up the money. It doesn’t work that way.

That’s how we keep the peace.”

ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT

Alumni Notes

1970s Lindsey Boney III (’73, accounting) is principal at Smith Dukes in Mobile, Alabama. Over the last few years, he has received CFE and CVA certifications. He and his wife, Susan, celebrated their 45th anniversary last May with a European river cruise.

Joe Brown (’77, finance) now serves as finance director for the City of Callaway, Florida, after serving in the same capacity for the nearby City of DeFuniak Springs.

Timothy Durfee (’73, business administration) completed his 20th year as a self-employed businessman in agriculture. He has been married for 37 years and has a son who is a surgeon in Miami and a daughter who owns her own marketing firm in Atlanta. He is also the proud grandfather of a 3-year-old “future Tiger.”

Stephen A. Frakes (’70, business administration) featured on page 8, is selfemployed and living in Frisco, Colorado.

He has served as a captain for Boeing 757 sports charter flights under contract for Paradigm Air Carriers. He has been flying contract professional sports team charters on the 757 and Boeing 727 for the last 12 years. Over the years, his passengers have included the Major League Baseball’s Texas Rangers, Colorado Rockies, Seattle Mariners, the NBA’s Houston Rockets, and the NHL’s Dallas Stars and Phoenix Coyotes.

Patrick Hardin (’72, business administration) has ended his career and his consulting business, Pharmaceutical Trade and Channel Management, after 44 years in the industry.

Bob Jones (’74, business administration), president and CEO of United Bank, will serve a four-year term on the Community Development Advisory Board of the US Department of Treasury. President Donald Trump announced Jones’ appointment in September 2017. Jones joined United Bank in 1990 and became president and CEO in 1992.

Albert K. Jordan (’78, general business) is retired and enjoying being the grandfather of twins.

Craig P. Kelley (’78, business administration) serves as vice president for Dunkin-Lewis, Inc. He also serves on the Hoover, Alabama, Board of Education.

sales of $79 million. By the time Robinson retired, it had grown to more than 2,300 locations and sales of $6.8 billion. He and his wife, Dianne Keen Robinson, whom he met while at Auburn, have two children— Joy and Josh—and four grandchildren. His hobbies include golf, travel, landscaping, and reading.

Timothy Parker Patterson (’79, industrial management) serves as director of program management—XBOX for Microsoft Corporation in Redmond, Washington. He became a grandfather

Stuart Schoppert (’74, MBA) is “retired on the lake” in Texas. He manages to stay busy working on his farm, fishing, hunting, and overseeing an IRS VITA site in Corsicana, Texas.

two years ago, welcoming a grandson into the family. He also enjoyed a 21-day trip to Alaska, progressing from Kodiak Island to Anchorage, the Kenai, and finally, Denali.

George Pierce (’75, industrial management) works in management for Associated Builders and Contractors in Homewood, Alabama. He was recently elected to his third term on the Vestavia Hills City Council.

Tom Raney (’79, marketing) is senior vice president for JE Dunn Construction.

His daughter, Sally, who is majoring in accounting in the Harbert College.

His youngest daughter, Suzannah, will graduate from Holy Innocents Episcopal School in Atlanta and plans to attend Auburn in the fall.

Robert D. Rasmussen (’72, industrial management) is retired. He was an active duty US Marine staff sergeant E6 while at Auburn, graduated as a second lieutenant in 1972, and retired in 1982.

Robert Reynolds (’75, accounting) is retired and living in Knoxville, Tennessee, but stays busy as a grandfather. He and his wife watch their 2-year-old granddaughter three days a week.

Steve Robinson (’72, marketing) is selfemployed as a consultant after serving as chief marketing officer and executive VP for Chick-fil-A from 1981 to 2015. When he joined Chick-fil-A, the company had a little more than 100 mall locations and annual

John L. Segrest (’78, marketing) is senior vice president of Grandbridge Real Estate Capital, LLC in Birmingham, Alabama. He earned the Sterling Achievement Award in 2017 for being a top producer in the company. Segrest also celebrated the birth of his first grandchild in February 2017.

1980s William Allen (’80, business administration) is the president and owner of Allen Advisors, LLC in Newry, Maine.

He was recently elected to the Board of Directors of the National Academy of Human Resources in New York City. His favorite pastimes include hiking, downhill skiing, and snowshoeing.

Robert Beck (’84, management) is the general manager for KSG Promotions & Engraving. He has been in business for more than 31 years.

David Bondi (’88, management) is senior vice president and chief procurement officer for Revlon in New York City. He leads the procurement organization globally for the company’s direct and indirect goods and services. He has two children currently attending Auburn.

HM, Spring 2018 49

Alumni Notes ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT

1988 finance graduate now president at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Alabama Healthcare in Alabama and across the US faces numerous challenges: the debate over the Affordable Care Act, instability in the market, and possibly most pressing to individuals and companies who provide employee benefits – cost.

One Harbert College graduate, however, hopes to make an impact along the way. Tim Vines, who earned an undergraduate degree in finance in 1988, was appointed Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Alabama President and Chief Operating Officer last November.

“In my 24 years with Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Alabama, the changes we have experienced over the last five years have been some of the most dramatic,” says Vines. “The healthcare industry continues to change almost daily, and with that comes many challenges and opportunities. Collaborating with employers, individual members, healthcare providers, and public officials allows us to successfully navigate through these ongoing changes within the industry.”

Vines, who will succeed Terry Kellogg as Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Alabama CEO later this year, grew up in LaFayette, Ala., and “truly enjoyed my small-town upbringing,” he says. “Growing up, I always liked math and knew I wanted to do something involving numbers.”

He did just that.

After a five-year banking career, Vines served in a variety of capacities at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Alabama including Vice President of Special Claims Operations, Vice President of Health Management, Senior Vice President of Health Management, Senior Vice President of Business Operations, Chief Administrative Officer, and most recently, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer.

Part of the future of healthcare in Alabama lies in Vines’ direction.

“Making every effort to control healthcare costs for our members continues to be one of our main focuses,” he says. “We believe our customers should have access to quality healthcare at the most affordable price. I am proud that our efficient business practices and collaborative efforts with physicians, hospitals, and other providers are a significant reason why Alabama’s healthcare premiums are among the lowest in the country. By working closely with physicians and other providers, we are always looking to

implement new ideas and best practices to deliver improved health outcomes and control costs for our members.”

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Alabama continues to search for innovative means to support customers and engages its members with the goal of providing quality, affordable healthcare.

“We are constantly reviewing and evaluating our products and services to ensure they are meeting and exceeding our customers’ expectations,” he adds.

Vines believes Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Alabama will continue to be the “insurer of choice” among employers and families 20 years from now. “This has been our mission for the past 80-plus years, and we plan to continue that mission for the next 80 years and beyond. We recognize everything we do is on behalf of our customers and we don’t take that for granted.”

Dr. Donald Boudreaux (’86, PhD, economics) is a senior fellow with the F.A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics and Economics at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center. He serves as a professor of economics and is the former chair of the economics department.

Jon Brasher (’85, management; ’87, MBA), field and media research coordinator for Auburn University’s Crop, Soil and Environmental Sciences department, received a patent in March 2017 for an anti-rust coating that could prove to be breakthrough technology for utility companies and other industries. His “Storm Greeter,” a heat-cured material, creates a non-corrosive coating that can stand up to elements for decades.

Brenda J. Clark (’85, MBA) retired from her position as deputy director of mission and installation command at Fort Benning, Georgia. She is currently working as an independent acquisition consultant.

Cole Powell (’80, accounting) is a shareholder with Elliott Davis in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He has completed quality of earnings projects for more than 100 physician practice merger and acquisition transactions. He was married in 2015 and has two stepsons. He recently celebrated his oldest son earning his pilot wings from the US Air Force.

Ron Siwa (’87, accounting) is the owner, VP, and CFO of Roloff Construction in Omaha, Nebraska. “Ownership for the past 14 years has brought all the leadership, audit, accounting and project management learning [from Auburn] into a career that I can grow a business with my partners,” he says. He and his wife, Stacey Patterson Siwa, an Auburn speech pathology graduate, celebrated their 30th anniversary in December 2017.

Victor E. Sower (’80, MBA), distinguished professor emeritus at Sam Houston State University, published his newest book, “We Move Our Own Cheese: A Business Fable About Championing Change,” in 2017.

Mark Forchette (’81, marketing) serves as president and CEO of Delphinus Medical Technologies in Novi, Michigan.

The company has launched a 10,000 patient screening indication clinical trial to transform early detection of breast cancer for women with dense breasts, utilizing its SoftVue technology. He and his family, wife Addie-Marie, daughter Alexis, and son AJ, enjoyed an “epic vacation,” island hopping on a catamaran in the British Virgin Islands.

1990s

Scott MacArthur (’83, accounting) became president and COO of Michael & Son Services, Inc., in the Washington, DC, metro area in November 2017.

Jeff Brandon (’98, marketing) joined NavPoint Real Estate Group as a broker.

He previously worked at Colliers and CBRE.

Michelle McKenna-Doyle (’87, accountancy), senior VP and chief information officer for the National Football League, joined the Board of Directors for Reston, Virginia-based ComScore, Inc., and Mountain View, California-based Quotient Technology, Inc.

Steve Conn (’97, international business) works for Delta Air Lines in Washington, DC, as a sales account executive. He was recognized as a Delta Platinum Circle Award member for performing in the top 2 percent of annual sales goals. One of the perks of working for a major airline is being able to discover new places.

“My top three spots are Capetown, the Seychelles, and Muscat.” Conn’s hobbies include boating in the Chesapeake Bay and attending small town festivals on

R. Lee Walters (’86, industrial operations management) is principal legal investigator for Morgan & Morgan Complex Litigation Group in Huntington Beach, California. His hobbies include photography and hiking.

Maryland’s Eastern Shore. “If you haven’t seen a boat docking contest where the watermen run their crabbing boats into slips for the fastest time, Google it and add it to your bucket list.”

Shayne George (’90, marketing) has been named CEO of Memorial Health, a two-state healthcare organization serving a 35-county area in southeast Georgia and southern South Carolina. He began his career leading ancillary hospital departments in Georgia and Louisiana before moving into officer roles with HCA hospitals in North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida.

Peter Hanley (’98, MBA) is an attorney/ health, environmental, and safety specialist for Marathon Petroleum Company, LP. He is assigned to the transportation and logistics organization, where he assists with risk analysis of companies and assets under consideration for acquisition.

Dale Henderson (’93, marketing) is a partner at SiteMix Concrete in Atlanta, Georgia. He started the company in 2015 with 1992 Auburn graduate Wayne Bylsma and this year purchased a pressure grouting business with Bylsma and 1991 graduate John Knieper. “My family was in the ready-made concrete business in Atlanta for 51 years and I grew up in the business. I was always learning from my father and grandfather. They inspired me to work hard and earn the respect of people I work with and/or manage.”

Greg Houts (’97, finance) is assistant vice president and finance systems manager for RenaissanceRe in Bermuda. He made the transition to Bermuda three years ago.

“Working for a top-tier, global reinsurance company has provided both life and professional experiences that I could not have imagined as a student at Auburn,” he says. His personal and professional travels have taken him to such destinations as Paris, London, Costa Rica, Ireland, Belgium, and the Canary Islands.

HM, Spring 2018 51

Alumni Notes John Knox (’95, economics), president of R.F. Knox Co., Inc., has been elected president of the Sheet Metal and Air Conditioning Contractors National Association’s Board of Directors. He is the fourth generation to run his family business. He grew up working in his father’s sheet metal shop and entered the industry as an estimator two days after graduating from Auburn. After his father’s retirement in 2007, he became president of the 103-year-old company.

Scott Koser (’92, finance) co-founded an investment management firm and earned CFA designation.

Scott McGlon (’92, transportation and physical distribution) is the president of McGlon Properties, LLC in Auburn, Alabama. He moved back home to Auburn in June 2017 after 17 years in the Montgomery area. His hobbies include working on his classic car collection with his son and spending time with his family.

Chris Mims (’96, finance) serves as general counsel for Great Southern Wood Preserving, Inc., the producer of Yellawood, in Abbeville, Alabama. He completed his 10th year with the company in March 2017.

Chris (DiVecchio) Monnens (’95, accounting) serves as VP of human resources for Hitachi Consulting in San Francisco, California.

J. Don Overton (’92, finance) is principal for The Overton Firm in Little Rock, Arkansas. He has been selected to the Land Development Committee for the National Association of Home Builders and was re-elected to the Board of Directors for the Home Builders Association of Greater Little Rock and the Arkansas Home Builders Association. He serves as chairman of the construction law section of the Arkansas Bar Association.

Steven Patterson (’98, MBA) serves as operations manager of manufacturing and engineering for GE Appliances: Roper Corporation in Fayetteville, Georgia.

He has worked with GE for more than 30 years in a variety of roles within manufacturing and program management.

He is expecting the arrival of his first

grandchild in May. In his spare time, he enjoys playing golf and raising money on behalf of United Way and the American Heart Association.

Jennifer L. Chandler (’02, business administration) works for Kindred in Naples, Florida, as a physical therapist assistant.

Mark Porterfield (’90, finance) is president and CEO of Caliber Care+Transport in Montgomery and Birmingham, Alabama.

His hobbies include hunting and classic car restoration.

Kevin Douglas (’05, logistics) serves as a licensed sales agent for Southern Shores Real Estate Group, LLC. Before making the transition to real estate, he worked in distribution for J.C. Penney.

Greg Poulakos (’95, information systems) has been appointed president of Anthem’s Life and Disability Business. He previously served as vice president of underwriting at Lincoln Financial. He also served as senior VP for UnitedHealthcare, leading its life, disability, and voluntary business. Before holding these roles, he held a variety of leadership positions with The Hartford’s group benefits and reinsurance businesses.

Parker W. Eiland (’02, information systems) serves as CEO of Scorpion Racing Products in Ocala, Florida.

Julie Reeves (’98, accountancy; ’00, MBA) serves as the top non-elected official in Morgan County, Alabama. She had served as the county’s deputy chief since 2012 and was originally hired as the county’s governmental accountant in 2008.

Rob Fisher (’02, international business) works as a field service representative for Google in Atlanta. When he’s not working, he’s enjoying time with his 4-year-old twin boys, Jackson and Lawson.

Matt Skelton (’98, management) is a partner with Inzer, Haney, McWhorter and Haney, LLC in Gadsden, Alabama. He practices business, family, and probate law in Etowah County.

2000s Chase Anderson (’04, marketing) has served as chief strategy officer for Anderson Companies, which has been ranked among the 125 largest private companies in the US by Forbes. The company’s holdings include more than 100 different businesses. Anderson is now the fifth owner in the history of B.A.S.S., the 50-year-old fishing organization.

Robert Calhoun (’03, finance) serves as a licensed realtor, as well as a certified appraiser with Crye-Leike Realtors. He celebrated the birth of his daughter, Anna Bradley Calhoun, in December 2016.

Bryan Elmore (’02, accounting) serves as Auburn University’s director of budget services. He became a licensed CPA in August 2017. He and wife, Cathi, celebrated their 10th anniversary with a trip to the Dominican Republic.

Ashley Hammonds (’02, finance) earned a promotion to senior VP of sales for Reliance Partners, a commercial insurance agency. He previously served as vice president for Hammonds Trucking, where he managed daily operations for a 100unit company.

Julie Howard (’03, marketing) serves as success manager and event coordinator for WBRC FOX 6 in Birmingham, Alabama. She has earned the WBRC Team Achievement Award for Outstanding Performance and Dedication and has also been recognized as the Easter Seals of the Birmingham Area Volunteer of the Year.

Her hobbies include golfing and do-ityourself projects with her husband, Jimmy Howard.

Eric Jones (’04, finance) joined Parker’s Convenience Stores as chief information officer in October 2017. He will develop the company’s new business intelligence platform to analyze trends, identify emerging new market opportunities, and drive improvements. Previously, he served as president and co-founder of Datalyst, LLC.

Husband-wife business team creates popular Tennessee distillery When many think of whiskey distilleries in Tennessee, Jack Daniel’s is often the first to come to mind. But Jack Daniel’s isn’t owned and operated by Harbert College of Business graduates.

Leiper’s Fork Distillery, near Franklin, Tennessee, is.

Lee Kennedy, who as a 16-year-old built a still in his mother’s Nashville, Tennessee, basement, blended his fascination of distillation with an entrepreneurial spirit and created a 100-proof family-owned distillery in 2016. Lee and his wife, Lynlee, founded the distillery, which produces, and distributes three brands of whiskey—Old Natchez Trace, Leiper’s Fork, and Hunter’s Select.

The husband-wife team makes for an interesting business dynamic just miles south of Nashville. Lee, a 2000 Harbert College graduate in business administration, manages the overall operations of the distillery, while Lynlee, a 2002 Harbert College finance graduate, manages the retail aspect, including scheduling, inventory management, and marketing.

“She does this on top of running our household and raising two wonderful boys,” Lee says about his wife. “We definitely have our hands full between kids, school, sports and work. We try to leave our work at the office, but sometimes that is easier said than done.

It is always nice to have a trusted ally at work and we both have each other’s best interest at heart.”

The couple met in high school in Nashville, but began dating in college.

Lee Kennedy, who grew up in Monroeville and Orange Beach, Alabama, before moving to Nashville, didn’t go directly into the distillery business after college. Instead, he worked as an estimator in commercial construction while continuing his beloved hobby of making whiskey. But when Tennessee laws were revised in 2009 —allowing distilleries to open in 41 counties—Kennedy’s hobby became pursuit of a dream.

Lynlee made it her priority to support that dream. “Naturally, I have suggestions and opinions, but the most important role I can have being Lee’s wife and business partner is to be his number one fan and support,” she says. “I am so proud of what Lee has accomplished and I think that we are truly blessed to be able to work together and continue to grow our business successfully.”

Obviously, new business must clear hurdles. Leiper’s Fork was no different, as it had to clear numerous local and federal regulations before opening. “At the local level, we went through a three-year

ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT

approval process that included four public hearings and a law change,” Lee says. “Being tenacious is an asset.”

Another hurdle any business faces is managing personnel. Lynlee Kennedy says a crucial part in that process is making employees feel important and special. “To be successful at anything you must have a creative, talented, dedicated team on your side,” she says. “We couldn’t be where we are today without the support of our team. I think that is very important to treat your team the way you would want to be treated. Get your team involved as much as you can.

Ask your team for suggestions. Give your team credit where due.”

Leiper’s Fork isn’t creating a product that will be consumed tomorrow, or next week. Instead, the Kennedys must think longterm. Very long-term.

“The distilling industry is a little different in the fact that we think in terms of decades and not in months or years,” says Kennedy, whose operation is one of 32 distilleries in the state.

“Whiskey we barrel today will not see the light of day for five years or so. Everything we do here promotes that focus – including retail, tours and tastings.

“I think every business needs to understand its primary reason for being. As a distillery, our primary focus is producing the best whiskey we can using local resources and time-honored techniques.

This sets us up for how we are perceived down the road.”

Lee Kennedy advises young entrepreneurs to set goals and strive toward them with tenacity. “If you have something that you want to do, then go for it, but do it wholeheartedly. I believe that when the unquenchable passion, hard work, and proper funding meet, good things can happen,” he says.

“Branding starts with customer service, especially with a local company.

Word of mouth can make or break you in a local market, and we take that seriously.”

Kennedy hopes to have his products in the Auburn market by this fall.

HM, Spring 2018 53

ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT

Accounting alum marches to the beat of a different drum John Canada isn’t your ordinary School of Accountancy alum. Instead of spending his career balancing spreadsheets, the Birmingham native moves to the beat of a different drum. Literally.

After a successful internship, the 2016 Master of Accountancy graduate was offered a full-time position at PriceWaterhouseCoopers in Nashville. But his passion for pursuing a career in the music industry was overwhelming.

“It wasn’t until this internship that the reality of the real world started to hit me,” he says. “It seemed like this was going to be life.

You get up, go to work, eat lunch, work, eat dinner, go home . . . and then what? Would I be too tired at the end of the day to work on my musical ideas? Music is always something I’ve wanted to make a living doing, but I never thought I would or could actually do it.”

But he is.

Canada is lead percussionist and sings vocals for the Birmingham-based, four-man party band The Brook and the Bluff. What started out as small-time gigs as a cover band at local bars and restaurants is blossoming into something much larger.

“We have been in the studio recording new songs, which are being released as singles every few months,” says Canada, who originally played with the band in Auburn on Iron Bowl weekend of 2015. “This strategy has proved to be very effective and puts a lot of emphasis on each and every release.”

The group’s goal is to play 52 original shows in 52 weeks in as many cities as possible. “We are about halfway to our goal, so a little ahead of schedule, thankfully,” he says. “In August, we will do a two-week tour up to New York City and back, stopping in places

like Athens, Ga., Nashville, Charlotte, and Washington, DC.” The group set up permanent shop in Nashville in early 2018.

Canada, who performed in college with the local band John Wilkris Trio, described the band’s sound as “indie rock with a good amount of soul.”

“What makes The Brook and The Bluff special is emphasis on vocals,” he says. “All four members of the band sing, so each arrangement is centered around the vocals. Each of us come from a choir background, so harmony is something that comes naturally to each of us. In terms of genre, we draw a lot of inspiration from acts like the Alabama Shakes, John Mayer, and The Beatles.”

When Canada phoned the PwC recruiter and informed him that he was “taking another path” and needed a year to re-assess, he had no idea how far this would go. “As the band continued to progress, I realized that we would not be defined as a success or failure in one year’s time,” he says. “Pursuits like these take time to lay a foundation and build upon. I wouldn’t ever give your dream a timeline.”

Canada encourages people to pursue their dreams, even if it means leaving something secure behind.

“I think the weight of the question ‘what if ?’ is so much heavier than ‘what if I fail?’” he says. “If you try and fail at something, at least you can say you tried. Everyone wants to make a living doing what fulfills them and makes them happy. There is no faster way to learn than by diving right in and putting yourself in an uncomfortable situation. You will be pleasantly surprised at everything you will learn in the process.”

Alumni Notes Belinda McLain (’09, accounting) owns Belinda K. McLain CPA, LLC in Laurel, Mississippi. She started her own accounting firm in November 2017.

Britni Miller (’04, entrepreneurial and small business operations) is a marketing specialist for Gables Corporate Accommodations and also owns MilSpouse Resource & Oak Tree Network.

She has been working remotely since 2008 due to her status as a military spouse who is often on the move. She earned Gables Corporate Accommodations’ Corporate Office Associate of the Year award in 2015.

Anne Morris (’01, accounting) earned a promotion, becoming a principal with Windham Brannon, a firm specializing in tax, audit, and advisory services. She currently serves on the Task Force for the Georgia Society of Certified Public Accountants Employee Benefit Plan Conference.

Willis Palmer (’04, entrepreneurship and family business) serves owner, president, and broker at Coast Properties in Santa Rosa Beach, Florida. He started his real estate brokerage in 2015 and it has grown to 17 agents, two offices and more than $55 million in sales. “Best move I ever made,” he says.

Scott Pohlman (’01, finance; ’03, MBA) now serves as Nashville Market president for SunTrust Banks, Inc. He previously served as director in Syndicated & Leveraged Finance with SunTrust Robinson Humphrey in Atlanta. During his time at Auburn, Pohlman was a fan favorite as a guard on the Auburn basketball team. He averaged 11.2 points per game and hit 206 3-point shots over the course of his playing career.

Jayme Reynolds (’07, finance) is an e-commerce consultant manager for Wipro Technologies. In 2017, Reynolds took a vacation to Bora Bora, Tahiti, and other French Polynesian islands.

Roger Spain (’00, accounting) serves as market leader for Oakworth Capital Bank in Alabama’s River Region, which includes Montgomery and surrounding areas.

Before joining Oakworth, he worked for 25 years as a CPA and earned Chartered Financial Analyst designation.

Charles T. Stacy (’04, finance) is a financial advisor for Cadaret, Grant. He has worked as a financial advisor since graduating from Auburn, but has been independent for the last seven years. He married his wife, Shirley, in 2015. His hobbies include fishing with his two sons and attending Auburn football games.

Robert Henry Thayer II (’01, marketing; ’09, MBA) is vice president of marketing for Tri-North Builders in Madison, Wisconsin, and is also the owner and pilot for RT Aerial Productions. He enjoys flying his family to their cabin getaway on weekends and has recently taken up curling as a hobby.

Thomas N. Thompson (’02, economics) welcomed his second child—son Isaac Graham Thompson—into the world in February 2017.

Katherine (Casey) Gay Williams (’09, Executive MBA) is the president of the Eastern Shore Chamber of Commerce in Fairhope, Alabama. Her hobbies include traveling, cooking, and spending time with her 2 ½-year-old grandson, Charlie.

John Wood (’00, business administration) opened his own business, Wood & Associates, in October 2016. He earned a master’s degree in management information systems from UAB.

2010s Lauren Bagby (’17, marketing) is a designer showroom sales representative with Summer Classics and Gabby Home in Chicago, Illinois. She received an offer for her position as the Chicago showroom manager after completing five months of training at the corporate offices in Birmingham. Her team of outside sales representatives covers Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

Regan Bercher (’15, marketing) is director of membership experience at The Gathering Spot in Atlanta, Georgia.

She joined the start-up business as its first employee. She also celebrated her engagement last November.

Barry Brown (’10, aviation management) serves as deputy director of operations and maintenance at Portland International Jetport. He earned AAAE certification in December 2017 and recently became deputy director of the AAAE SMS National Working Group, the SWAAAE Diversity Committee, as well as an Airport Cooperative Research Program Ambassador. Brown, who will get married in August, enjoys flying, working out, and exploring scenic routes on his motorcycle.

Adam Chapman (’11, economics) serves as a human resources recruiter for Toyo Tire North America Manufacturing. He will soon celebrate his two-year anniversary with the company and is in the midst of a busy 2018. “I will look to fill 200-plus positions at our 3 million-square foot facility.” He celebrated his engagement in December 2017. In his free time, he enjoys drawing cartoons.

Drew Dunkin (’14, professional flight) serves as first officer and Auburn ambassador/recruiter for GoJet Airlines, flying the CRJ 700/900 out of Raleigh, North Carolina under contract for Delta Connection and United Express.

Harrison Evola (’17, entrepreneurship) serves as CEO of FetchMe, LLC, a mobile app-enabled delivery company he began as a Harbert College student in 2016.

The company, which celebrated its first anniversary in fall 2017, provides doorto-door delivery of groceries, restaurant items, coffee, cosmetics, and other household items.

Kerry Hassler Higley (’10, human resources) is the co-founder and COO of GenConnect Recruiting & Consulting, Inc., in Huntsville, Alabama. She and her husband have also begun the adoption process and are waiting to be matched with their first child.

HM, Spring 2018 55

Alumni Notes Stuart Holmes (’12, MBA) became vice president and CFO of Outokumpu Americas in Mobile, Alabama, in January 2018. He is the first American to hold the position. He and his family recently moved back to the United States from Helsinki, Finland. His hobbies include cycling, running, and competing in triathlons.

He recently signed up for his first Half Ironman event.

Anne Bentson Johnson (’16, finance) is a cost accountant with Johns Manville in Phenix City, Alabama.

Laura Kneiss (’12, marketing) is in her third year as assistant marketing director for the Indiana University athletic department.

She earned her master’s degree in sports administration from Indiana in May 2017.

William Laffoon (’10, information systems) serves as manager of L2 client support for NanthHealth in Panama City, Florida. He is currently working to build his team into a Level 3 support team.

Ryan Parten (’10, supply chain management) is a senior analyst with Nationwide Mutual in Columbus, Ohio. His 2017 vacation to the Virgin Islands proved to be an adventure as he had to weather Hurricane Irma.

Sean Suggs (’10, MBA), VP of manufacturing for Toyota Mississippi, was appointed to the Mississippi state Board of Education in fall 2017. The board consists of nine members, five of whom are appointed by the governor and two each by the speaker of the house and the lieutenant governor for nine-year terms.

He joined Toyota Mississippi in 2013.

Nicholas Wichowski (’15, Executive MBA) is the director of corporate operations for Comfort Monster Heating and Air in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Robert W. Wiseman (’15, MBA) is program manager for product development at Lochinvar, LLC in Lebanon, Tennessee.

His professional milestones include US patent No. 9,746,176. His hobbies include spending time with his family and competing in triathlons.

56 HM, Spring 2018

A sense of clarity ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT Joe Collazo started the path to higher education later than most, but that path has led to five degrees and his current position as assistant director of graduate executive programs at Harbert College. Auburn was one of the stops on that path; Collazo earned an executive MBA here in 2010.

He was nearing 50, had served in the Army, and had built a private-sector business career when his son began considering education options as his high school graduation loomed.

“That motivated me,” Collazo says. “I needed to model that rather than just talk about college. So at 48 I began my undergraduate career.”

He wasted little time adding academic achievements. As he was completing his bachelor’s degree, he applied to Auburn’s Executive MBA program. “I graduated on Friday and on Saturday I was in Auburn for the first residency,” he says.

Organizational leadership has always interested him. In his time in the Army and in his work as a defense contractor, he had seen the effects of the authoritative leadership sometimes required in military operations. He had seen the interactions of such leaders with creative employees. Eventually, that interest would lead to a PhD from Pepperdine, where his dissertation examined the impact of leadership on innovation.

In studying high-ranking officers who later held executive positions, he found that most were not “stuck in military-style leadership,” but were “basically ambidextrous” and adapted to become transformational leaders with shared missions and visions.

For Collazo, the lure of the academy grew stronger. He found a “sense of clarity” about moving from private-sector business to teaching. He wanted to teach organizational leadership and management courses, and his “strong affinity” for Auburn led him to begin teaching in the MBA programs as an adjunct. From there, he moved in 2017 into the assistant director’s position, which allows him to both teach in the executive programs and recruit students for them.

“What I tell people about the program is that business is complex, and if you know a small slice of it, a thin lane, so to speak, you can have a career for 25 or 30 years and be appreciated,” he says. “But if you’re guiding strategy or making decisions on allocating resources, knowing a small slice of your business is not enough.

“They need broader knowledge for an executive role. Our multi-disciplinary approach gives them a lens they never had before. What’s important is that they see more comprehensively. Then they may be asked to do more things.”

Harbert’s executive MBA programs not only impart that broader knowledge to individual students, but also allow them to gain insights from their fellow students and build lasting relationships that benefit them in their professional and personal lives.

“When you’re in a stimulated, facilitated conversation, the quality of education goes up dramatically,” Collazo says. “You only get that enhanced experience with the residencies. You end up with pro bono consultants and a bench that’s 40 or more people deep.”

A MAN OF MANY TALENTS

When Bill Hardgrave arrived at Auburn University in 2010, becoming dean of a then-unnamed college of business, he brought with him the vision of transforming it into “an elite public school of business.”

The highlights during his 7-year tenure were numerous: 47 percent enrollment growth, the introduction of new centers devoted to supply chain and radio frequency identification technology research, the creation of new academic programs, Top 10 national rankings for

five academic programs, expansion of faculty professorships and endowed professorships, and, last but certainly not least, a 230 percent increase in the size of the college’s endowment.

When an organization experiences success at that level, others will take note.

Hardgrave took on a new role as Auburn University’s provost and vice president for academic affairs in January 2018. We wish him well in his new role.

Harbert is hitting the target on ethics education

58 58 HM, Spring HM, Spring 2018 2018

Dean’s Last Word

T

he Auburn Creed embodies several virtues that the Harbert College embraces and encourages as we aim to provide our enrollees with a superior student experience. One element is to integrate the virtues of the Creed into the fabric of our educational offerings. While this is accomplished in a variety of ways, the Center for Ethical Organizational Cultures of the Harbert College plays a key role in this endeavor.

One key target of the center is providing faculty with the resources and classroom materials necessary to help infuse organizational ethics education into our business curriculum.

While always important, given today’s very public and often highly sensitive business environment, many recruiters look for ethical leadership practices to be addressed as part of an undergraduate business curriculum. This is a challenge, as perceptions of ethical behavior may vary by individual and what is considered to be an ethical practice may vary by industry, discipline or even global region. Therefore, the Harbert College has elected to target ethics education by making a variety of resources available to faculty, staff, and students. This allows the topic of ethical leadership to be addressed in multiple ways, including embedding the topic into the coursework of each discipline, offering education through participation in a student organization, and hosting guest speakers to address various ethics topics.

Not only do business decision-makers need to practice ethical leadership to be successful, but they must also foster a culture of highly ethical behavior throughout the entire organization. How to practice ethical leadership and foster a culture of ethical behavior has become a focal point of the ethics education program of the Harbert College. As a result of our ethics program, students now have the opportunity to obtain a certificate in ethical leadership. Students who earn this credential further differentiate themselves from many of their peers in the job market.

I challenge each of our students to think about the contents and meaning of the Auburn Creed and consider how closely many of the virtues of it align with our educational emphasis on ethical leadership.

Many of today’s students will be tomorrow’s leaders.

Those students who aim to be leaders will be well served by following the virtues of the Auburn Creed and the principles of the ethical leadership program of the Harbert College of Business.

The Auburn Creed I believe that this is a practical world and that I can count only on what I earn.

Therefore, I believe in work, hard work.

I believe in education, which gives me the knowledge to work wisely and trains my mind and my hands to work skillfully.

I believe in honesty and truthfulness, without which I cannot win the respect and confidence of my fellow men.

I believe in a sound mind, in a sound body and a spirit that is not afraid, and in clean sports that develop these qualities.

I believe in obedience to law because it protects the rights of all.

I believe in the human touch, which cultivates sympathy with my fellow men and mutual helpfulness and brings happiness for all.

I believe in my Country, because it is a land of freedom and because it is my own home, and that I can best serve that country by “doing justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly with my God.” And because Auburn men and women believe in these things, I believe in Auburn and love it.

-George Petrie (1943)

Joe B. Hanna, PhD Interim Dean and Regions Bank Professor Harbert College of Business HM, Spring 2018 59