Seventh Annual Wharton Leadership Conference

LEADING WITH INTEGRITY

June 4, 2003  

Wharton's Huntsman Hall, Room 6, Walnut St. and 38th St., Philadelphia

Conference Hosts
Confirmed Conference Presenters
Conference Agenda
Conference Book Prizes
Grand Prize at Conference
Conference Registration Information

Online Registration

Prior Annual Wharton Leadership Conferences

The accounting scandals that have rocked American companies point to the vital importance of character and integrity in leadership.  Governance, compensation, and compliance systems can foster or undermine ethical decisions; company cultures and codes of conduct add their own underpinnings for responsible -- or sometimes irresponsible -- behavior.  But managerial character is equally vital for ensuring that companies remain on the high road in the avid pursuit of great financial performance. The seventh annual Wharton Leadership Conference is devoted to exchanging ideas on how personal integrity, responsible thinking, and the other qualities of great leadership can be developed and ensured.  

CONFERENCE HOSTS

                                        

Janice Bellace, Professor Legal Studies and Management and former Deputy Dean, Wharton School; founding President and Vice-Chair of the Board of Trustees, Singapore Management University

Peter Cappelli, Professor of Management and Director of the Center for Human Resources, Wharton School

Stewart Friedman, Practice Professor of Management, Wharton School, and former Director, Leadership Development Center, Ford Motor Company

Monica McGrath, Adjunct Professor of Management, Wharton School

Michael Useem, Professor of Management and Director of the Center for Leadership and Change Management, Wharton School

Evan Wittenberg, Director, Wharton Leadership Program

CONFIRMED CONFERENCE PRESENTERS 

Edward D. Breen is chairman and chief executive of Tyco International, a diverse manufacturing and service firm with more than 250,000 employees.  He joined the company in July, 2002 and has brought in a new top management team to restructure the firm.  

Prior to joining Tyco, Mr. Breen was chairman and CEO of General Instrument Corporation and president and chief operating officer of Motorola, Inc. 

John J. Brennan is chairman and chief executive officer of the Vanguard Group, one of the world's largest investment management companies.  He joined the company in 1982, became CEO in 1996, and chairman in 1998.  

Founded in 1975, Vanguard offers a wide array of mutual funds and other financial products and services, including brokerage services, variable and fixed annuities, and life insurance, as well as financial planning, asset management, and trust services to individual investors and institutional investors in the United States and abroad. It manages assets valued at more than $550 billion.  

Geoffrey Colvin is editorial director for Fortune magazine where is also a columnist and frequent contributor.  He has written and spoken widely on information technology, corporate governance, shareholder value, and company leadership. 

Mr. Colvin is heard daily on the CBS Radio Network, where he has made more that 4,000 broadcasts that reach seven million people each week, and he produces and anchors the weekly PBS television program, Wall $treet Week with Fortune.

James R. Cook is the Training Projects Coordinator for the U.S. Forest Service at the National Interagency Fire Center.  The Forest Service is the world’s largest wildland firefighting organization. 

Mr. Cook has worked in the wildland fire service since 1975.  For 18 years he was a Hotshot Crew Superintendent.  In this job he led one of the highest trained operational assets used in large fire suppression actions.  He has worked on more than 450 fire assignments in 20 states.  He has been in his current job since 1999 where his primary focus has been working on a national level initiative to establish a formal leadership development program for wildland firefighters.  Mr. Cook has also participated in training exchanges with wildland firefighting organizations in Australia and Chile.

Thomas Donaldson is professor legal studies at the Wharton School and heads Wharton's required MBA course on "Responsibility in Business." 

Professor Donaldson is the co-author of Ties that Bind: A Social Contract Approach to Business Ethics and co-editor of Ethical Issues in Business. 

William W. George is the former chair and chief executive of Medtronic, Inc., a leading medical technology company based in Minneapolis, Minnesota.  Medtronic's products include defibrillators and pacemakers.  During his 11 years as chief operating officer and then CEO, the company's revenues rose from $750 million to $5 billion, and its market value grew from $1 billion to more than $60 billion.

Judith Rodin is president of the University of Pennsylvania, where she is also professor of psychology in the School of Arts and Sciences and as a professor of medicine and psychiatry in the School of Medicine.  She became president in 1994 after serving as provost of Yale University.  

The University of Pennsylvania enrolls more than 25,000 students and includes more than 1,000 faculty members and 25,000 employees. 

Dr. Rodin serves on the boards of the Brookings Institution, Catalyst, and the Greater Philadelphia First Corporation, and on the boards of Aetna, AMR Corporation, Electronic Data Systems, and BlackRock Funds. She chairs the Council of Presidents of the Universities Research Association, Innovation Philadelphia, and is a member of the executive committee of the Association of American Universities. 

Patricia F. Russo is president and chief executive officer of Lucent Technologies, one of the largest suppliers of communications hardware, software and services to the world's communications service providers.

Ms. Russo was one of the founding executives who helped launch Lucent in 1996 and has spent 20 years of her career managing some of Lucent's and AT&T's largest divisions and most critical corporate functions.

Before returning to Lucent in January 2002, Ms. Russo served as president and chief operating officer of Eastman Kodak Company, overseeing the day-to-day operations of Kodak's operating divisions and serving as the CEO's strategic partner in pursuing new business opportunities.

Clifford L. Stanley is executive vice president of the University of Pennsylvania, a position he assumed in October, 2002 after a career in the U.S. Marine Corps.  As executive vice president, General Stanley serves as the university's chief operating officer, responsible for finance, investments, human resources, business services, facilities and real estate, public safety, information systems, computing, and internal audit and compliance.

Prior to joining the university, Major General Stanley served as the Deputy Commanding General, Marine Corps Combat Development Command, Quantico, Virginia; Marine Corps Principal Representative to the Joint Requirements Board in support of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and Commanding General for the Marine Corps Base at Quantico, Virginia. 

Larry Sutton is the Training Unit Leader for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) at the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho.  The BLM responds to wildland fires and other emergency incidents throughout the United States along with its interagency partners.  

For the last several years, Mr. Sutton has worked with many colleagues to build a leadership development program for wildland firefighters.  He is also a member of a Type 1 Incident Management Team, one of 16 such teams organized by the wildland fire agencies to respond to emergency incidents nationally; several such teams worked for weeks at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001.  Mr. Sutton has been in this line of work since 1979, responding to hundreds of  wildland fires as well as the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill and Hurricane Andrew.

Sherron Watkins is a former vice president of Enron Corporation.  She had warned CEO Kenneth Lay in August, 2001, that the company "might implode in a wave of accounting scandals."  She was named by Time magazine as one of three "Persons of the Year 2002."

Now an independent speaker and consultant, she is co-author of Power Failure: The Inside Story of How Enron's Culture of Arrogance and Greed Led to the Biggest Bankruptcy in American History (Random House, 2003). 

conference agenda 

7:30 – 8:00 a.m.  Continental Breakfast and Welcome:  Peter Cappelli, Director, Wharton Center for Human Resources, and Michael Useem, Director, Wharton Center for Leadership and Change Management.

8:00 – 9:00  John F. Brennan, Chair and CEO of the Vanguard Group.

9:00 – 9:45  Geoffrey Colvin, Editorial Director of Fortune magazine and Producer and Anchor of Wall $treet Week with Fortune.

9:45 – 10:00  Break

10:00 – 11:00  James Cook, Training Projects Coordinator for the U.S. Forest Service at the National Interagency Fire Center; Larry Sutton, Training Unit Leader for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management at the National Interagency Fire Center; and Michael Useem, Professor of Management and Director of the Center for Leadership and Change Management at the Wharton School.

11:00 – 11:45 Thomas Donaldson, Professor of Legal Studies at the Wharton School and co-author of Ties that Bind: A Social Contract Approach to Business Ethics.

11:45 – 12:30 Sherron Watkins, former Vice President of Enron Corporation and co-author of Power Failure: The Inside Story  of How Enron’s Culture of Arrogance and Greed Led to the Biggest Bankruptcy in American History.

12:30 – 2:00 Lunch – Speaker Edward Breen, Chair and CEO of Tyco International  

2:00 – 3:00 Judith Rodin, President of the University of Pennsylvania, and Clifford Stanley, Executive Vice President of the University of Pennsylvania.

3:00 – 3:15 Break

3:15 – 4:15 Patricia Russo, Chair and CEO, Lucent Technologies

4:15 – 5:15 William George, former Chair and CEO of Medtronic.

CONFERENCE BOOK PRIZES 

A drawing will be held at the conference for multiple copies of the latest books by our conference speakers and hosts. 

GRAND PRIZE AT CONFERENCE

A grand prize drawing will held at the conclusion of the conference for free attendance at a multi-day learning program offered by Wharton Executive Education.  Program options include The Leadership Journey, The CFO: Becoming a Strategic Partner, Critical Thinking: Real-World, Real-Time Decisions, Global Corporate Finance, Leading Organizational Change, and Wharton Leadership Ventures.  Wharton Executive Education programs can be viewed by clicking here.    

CONFERENCE REGISTRATION

To register online for the conference, click here; to reserve a hotel room, click here; and to receive updates on the conference, submit your e-mail address to useem@wharton.upenn.edu.  Discounts are available to companies associated with the Center for Human Resources and the Center for Leadership and Change; students of the Wharton Executive MBA Program; and members of the Advisory Board of Wharton Executive Education.