Cable Gal Speaking for the Airlines Film School Passing the Torch Lone Star Star   Cable Gal Catherine Eubanks McCollough (MBA ’91) was traveling more than one hundred thousand miles a year as an executive for Scientific-Atlanta when her young son asked her if she and the woman who worked as his full-time nanny could trade places. For McCollough, a rising star in cable and telecom equipment sales — a field where few women are found — it was a wake-up call. “My son basically said, ‘You’re not doing your job,’” McCollough told the Roanoke Times (September 23, 2001) in a lengthy article that examined the management style and skills of McCollough, a former winner of the “Woman to Watch Award” as selected by the trade group Women in Cable & Communications. To spend more time being a mom than a road warrior, in 2000 McCollough took a job as vice president and general manager of Cox Communications in Roanoke, Virginia, and reduced the nanny’s role to part-time. The old fires still burn, however, even though she is profoundly at peace. “I’m very tough, I’m very competitive,” declared McCollough, who cites her strong Christian beliefs and church work as affording her a deep inner calm. In her new role at Cox, McCollough supervises a staff of about 150 employees. She particularly likes to join the company’s cable installers on their rounds, in order to get their feedback and to hear from customers firsthand. “My job is to facilitate, to keep things moving in the right direction,” McCollough observed. The ultimate goal is to create an enjoyable workplace for all, she said, adding, “we’ve come close to achieving that.” RETURN TO THE TOP OF THE PAGE Speaking for the Airlines When the airlines sought government financial help in the wake of September’s terrorist attacks, Delta Airlines chairman and CEO Leo Mullin (MBA ’67) emerged as a powerful advocate for the industry, the Los Angeles Times (September 21, 2001) observed. According to the Times, “Mullin played a key role in assembling the rescue package and the financial and operating data required to persuade Congress and the Bush administration to help the carriers.” “Airline service is the backbone of our economy,” Mullin told the House Transportation Committee during a five-hour session. He also pointed out that the attacks had caused financial damage that went well beyond losses in passenger revenues, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (September 20, 2001) reported. “Many insurance companies have notified airlines of astronomic premium increases,” Mullin said. “Heightened security measures, which we all agree are absolutely essential, will substantially increase the cost of doing business.” Mullin came to Delta in 1997 after a two-year stint as vice chairman of Unicom Corporation and Commonwealth Edison. His rÈsumÈ also includes service at the First Chicago Corporation, where he spent fourteen years and rose to the position of president and COO of that commercial bank, and five years at Conrail, where he was instrumental in returning the troubled railroad to profitability. So it was not surprising that, with his background in finance and transportation, the Air Transport Association tapped him to be its spokesman before Congress. Aside from possessing a wealth of business expertise, Mullin also knows how to convey it well. “He’s so articulate, you can almost see the punctuation marks when he speaks,” noted the Atlanta Journal-Constitution RETURN TO THE TOP OF THE PAGE     Film School In 1994, after a career spent mostly in corporate America, Jeff Seder (MBA ’74, JD ’76) began to feel that his life lacked purpose. “I was a burned-out, sold-out ’60s leftover,” he told the Philadelphia Inquirer (September 13, 2001). “I was restless and bored.” Seder had been a Peace Corps volunteer in Africa before attending HBS; thinking back to that time made him want to do “something useful and outrageous” once again. Particularly concerned about violence among young people, Seder decided that he wanted to “make a commitment to at-risk youth.” At the time, he was chairman of an industrial fabrics firm in Pennsylvania, but prior to that, he had run a departmentstore chain in Southern California and had friends and contacts in the movie industry. With their help, in 1994 Seder founded the Big Picture Alliance (BPA), an organization that brings together film professionals, businesspeople, and teachers to help urban teens make films about some of the serious issues ó drugs, violence, love, sex, gangs, and poverty ó they face. “Our film apprenticeship programs have a track record of getting teens, including troubled teens who are currently enrolled in alternative facilities, interested in school programs and real-world job skills,” Seder observed. “It is meant to lure them into filmmaking. Kids discuss the films and have to think of a way that is real and mature to get out of bad situations.” Since BPA was formed, more than five hundred youths between the age of 15 and 20 have been involved in some fifty films, some of which have won awards at major film festivals and been broadcast on public television. RETURN TO THE TOP OF THE PAGE Passing the Torch In the closest thing to a royal succession business has had in many a year, last September Chairman Jack doffed his crown, bid farewell to his subjects, and ceded rulership of the kingdom of GE to his handpicked successor, Jeffrey Immelt (MBA ’82). As the new chairman and CEO of General Electric, the world’s most valuable company and the firm where he has spent his entire career, Immelt good-naturedly dealt with the barrage of attention that accompanied his media coronation. “I’ve never measured my self-worth by whether or not I got this job,” he told Business Week (September 17, 2001), which described Immelt as being so popular and well-liked at GE that, if it were put to a company-wide ballot, he would have been voted “Mr. Congeniality at the very least.” Immelt revealed that he intends to increase the use of technology throughout the company, make major acquisitions in several units, reorganize relations with customers, and increase diversity at the top of GE’s executive ranks, with the company looking “completely different in three or four years.” All well and good, but many observers are wondering if Immelt has stern enough stuff to continue Welch’s toughlove approach to management. One clue might be found in Immelt’s comments to USA Today (September 7, 2001), where he declared, “There’s consequence for lack of performance, and believe me, that won’t end with Jack Welch.” RETURN TO THE TOP OF THE PAGE     Lone Star Star Texas may seem an unlikely point of origin for an ice skater, but the Lone Star State recently welcomed home native son Paul Wylie (MBA ’00), winner of the silver medal in men’s figure skating at the 1992 Winter Olympics. Wylie, now a marketing executive for Walt Disney Studios, was the guest of honor at the Dallas Figure Skating Club’s sixtieth anniversary celebration last September, according to the Dallas Morning News (September 23, 2001). At the event, Wylie recalled numerous 4:30 a.m. sessions of skating and hockey as a boy at Dallas’s old Fair Park Coliseum ice rink. “In those days,” he observed, “skating in Dallas was a pretty unusual thing.” All that hard work eventually led to his Olympic moment at Albertville, France. It was a breakthrough for his career, said Wylie, who felt fortunate to have even made the team. “I was the guy who should have been left at home and forgotten about. Albertville was really a watershed.” He expressed great admiration for the current crop of skaters preparing for February’s Games in Salt Lake City, particularly their mastery of the quadruple jump. “I tried three times to do a quad and decided that it was probably going to lead me to injury,” said Wylie, who skated professionally before entering HBS. “Part of skating is knowing your strengths.” RETURN TO THE TOP OF THE PAGE