At first glance, it might be hard to draw parallels between the leaders of industry giants in the healthcare and retail sectors, especially when retail can range from footwear and hardware to food and beverage lines. While these industries share an impact on the daily lives of the average person – through healthcare, home activity and purchasing – their methods of execution vary greatly. You would expect that this variation is reflected across their leaders and founders, and for the most part that is true – with the exception of one point that many of them have in common: an MBA.
Next in our series on famous MBA alumni are the big names in the health, hardware and retail sectors. Read on to learn more where these impressive names went to business school, what they studied and how it got them where they are today.
Famous MBA Alumni: Healthcare & Retail
Gail Boudreaux, CEO Elevance Health (formerly Anthem Health), CBS MBA Class of 1989
Throughout her long and impressive career, Gail has worked as CEO for healthcare, insurance, finance and technology companies. Her drive to improve the lives of individuals and communities has brought her back to healthcare over and over again, founding and leading insurance and consultancy companies in the healthcare sector for over a decade. Her accomplishments include managing more than 60,000 employees, serving 45 million customers and overseeing the acquisition of $120 billion in revenue – and yet her proudest achievement remains “the culture we are building, the values we hold, and our efforts to redefine what’s possible in health care.”
Her current position as CEO of Elevance Health (formerly Anthem Health) is a chance to put these values into action – not least in the company’s signature volunteer program, of which she is particularly proud, which provides thousands of company associates and guests with the opportunity to help out local charitable organizations over a seven week long annual event. Her achievements keep her in the admiring eye of the public, with her appearing on the Forbes list of “The World’s 100 Most Powerful Women” on several occasions.
Boudreaux’s passion for education and enjoyment of her days as a student is well documented; both her undergraduate at Dartmouth and her MBA at Columbia Business School played pivotal roles in the development of her expertise and networks. Notably, she completed her MBA with a distinction in finance and healthcare administration, laying the groundwork for the career trajectory ahead of her.
Marvin Ellison, CEO of Lowe’s Hardware, Emory Goizueta EMBA Class of 2005
Marvin Ellison speaks often of the journey his life has taken him on. The path was not easy, paved with challenge and structural inequalities, but ultimately led him to success via the crucial turning point of his Executive MBA (EMBA). He earned an EMBA from Emory Goizuetta while based in Atlanta and in the two years that followed became a Home Depot division president, the first step on the ladder to leader of thousands of US stores.
In accounts of Ellison’s studies, EMBA and subsequent career, his material achievements are matched in scale by the attitude he adopts. He speaks frequently of the value of effort throughout his life, naming his hard working parents as a source of inspiration and citing his “capacity to dream” of a better life as crucial to his success. Ellison believes strongly that winning in business is about knowing what you “are good at” and advocates for showing up as yourself, even in spaces that feel unfamiliar.
These days, Ellison is Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of Lowe’s Companies, Inc., a home improvement company with more than 1,700 stores and approximately 300,000 associates in the United States. He has appeared many times on Barron’s annual list of “Top CEOs,” on Fortune’s “Most Inspirational CEOs,” on Savoy’s “Most Influential Black Executives in Corporate America” and on several “World’s Greatest Leaders” lists. He was even named “Father of the Year” by the National Father’s Day Council in 2017.
Phil Knight, Founder of Nike, Stanford GSB MBA Class of 1962
Looking at the expansive Nike empire today, it’s tricky to imagine the moment of its creation – even more so when you consider that the sportswear giant was initially the subject of a classroom discussion and, later, Philip Knight’s MBA thesis.
Philip Knight, founder and former CEO of global sports equipment and wear company Nike, credits his time at Stanford GSB with unleashing his creativity. “If there were no Stanford Graduate School of Business,” he says, “there would be no Nike.” While studying for his MBA there, running-mad Knight had the idea of writing on a subject which enthralled him (running shoes), wrote a thesis on the prospect of starting a company around it, discussed it with his classmates, and so formed the initial idea that would become the sportswear giant. With little more than $1200, Knight founded the sports shoe company on which the thesis was based shortly after graduating from the MBA program.
Philip Knight has a self-proclaimed “soft spot” for education that continued throughout his career, and he has praised the impact of his MBA in many interviews over the years. He has consistently channeled resources back into the school in which he learnt so much, endowing professorships, funding buildings and even donating $105 million to Stanford GSB in 2006 for a new campus to be built. The soft spot ran both ways, it seems, since Knight was awarded the “Degree of Uncommon Citizen” by Stanford, an award that honors individuals who have provided extraordinary service to the school, and which has been presented only 25 times.
In somewhat of a coincidence, the current CEO of Nike, John Donahoe, also has an MBA from Stanford GSB.
Indra Nooyi, Former CEO of PepsiCo, Yale School of Management MBA Class of 1980
Indra Nooyi, the former CEO of PepsiCo, spent an impressive 24 years at the company, 12 of which saw her occupying the top role of CEO. One of the world’s largest food and beverage companies, PepsiCo underwent dramatic and lucrative restructuring under Nooyi’s leadership, rising to meet higher standards for products, diversifying into health food and reimagining its products with the customer at the core.
Nooyi’s biggest impact on the company was to shift the focus to design. In interviews she tells stories of exploring supermarkets on weekends to spot PepsiCo products on shelves, of looking at everything they sold through the eyes of a regular customer, and of insisting that each product must engage customers so personally that they “fall in love with it.” With her at the helm, PepsiCo’s revenues increased from $35 billion to $63.5 billion between 2006 and 2017. Nooyi’s success is even more impressive when considered in the context of leadership at the time; she was one of the few female CEOs of corporate America in 2006.
Her inventive business strategy is no doubt influenced by the MBA she completed at Yale SOM , from which she graduated in 1980 at age 24; a degree so formative that she is now a top alumni donor to the business school. Her message to future MBAs and business leaders? “Every morning you’ve got to wake up with a healthy fear that the world is changing, and a conviction that, to win, you have to change faster and be more agile than anyone else.”
See Also: Famous Alumni in Tech & Social Media
