Skip to Main Content
HBS Home
  • About
  • Academic Programs
  • Alumni
  • Faculty & Research
  • Baker Library
  • Giving
  • Harvard Business Review
  • Initiatives
  • News
  • Recruit
  • Map / Directions
Alumni
  • Login
  • Volunteer
  • Clubs
  • Reunions
  • Magazine
  • Class Notes
  • Help
  • Give Now
  • Stories
  • Alumni Directory
  • Lifelong Learning
  • Careers
  • Programs & Events
  • Giving
  • …→
  • Harvard Business School→
  • Alumni→
  • Stories→

Stories

Stories

28 May 2019

What I Do: Gordon Medenica
(MBA 1979)

Lead Director, Mega Millions; Director, Maryland Lottery and Gaming
Re: Gordon Medenica (MBA 1979); By: Ryan Jones
Topics: Management, LeadershipManagement-Growth and Development Strategy
ShareBar

photo by Ryan Donnell

Last October, Gordon Medenica was in New York for an industry conference when the calls started coming in. As lead director of Mega Millions, the multi-state consortium he’s been overseeing since 2017, Medenica was the man to ask about a jackpot that had swollen to a record $1.5 billion. “The day before the big drawing, I think I did eight different interviews—Today, CBS, CNN, you name it,” he says. Most days, however, it’s behind-the-scenes work for Medenica, whose experience includes a five-year stint leading the New York Lottery; in 2015 he was appointed director of lottery and gaming for the State of Maryland. A media executive earlier in his career, including 16 years at the New York Times Company, Medenica was drawn by the scale of an industry with estimated annual revenues of over $80 billion, in addition to the challenge of injecting “business DNA” into a state agency.

“Mega Millions is run as a consortium by 11 member states: Georgia oversees the televised drawings, for example, while Virginia handles the money transfers between states, based on where the winner lives. That’s carried over into our agreement with Powerball: In 2010, we decided to cross-sell each other’s games. It’s something the industry accomplished by working together.”

“Maybe 20 percent of my time is devoted to different aspects of Mega Millions. Just one example: We’re fighting these parasitic lotteries that basically trade on our brand image and claim they’re selling Mega Millions tickets, when in reality they’re taking bets on the outcome of our game. So we’re fighting trademark battles, even as we have efforts well under way to develop the game internationally.”

“When I started as director of the New York Lottery, I was encouraged to run it like a business. That’s always stuck with me. But the process is extremely cumbersome—the state budget-setting exercises get down into the weeds of our operation, but they only look at the cost side, not the revenue side. So it’s a challenge. We try to stay as apolitical as we can.”

ShareBar

Featured Alumni

Gordon Medenica
MBA 1979
Login to send a message

Post a Comment

Featured Alumni

Gordon Medenica
MBA 1979
Login to send a message

Related Stories

    • 25 Jun 2025
    • HBS Alumni News

    Hitting A High Note

    Re: Tomer Zvulun (PLDA 21); By: April White
    • 01 Jun 2025
    • HBS Magazine

    Making Difficult Decisions: The General Manager’s Job

    Re: Samuel Berube (MBA 2025); Amy C. Edmondson (Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management); Tiona W. Zuzul (Associate Professor of Business Administration); By: Jen Mcfarland Flint; Illustration by Peter Arkle
    • 01 Jun 2025
    • HBS Magazine

    Keeping the Faith

    Re: Derek van Bever (MBA 1988); John Brown (MBA 1974); Poonam Sacheti (MBA 2021); Ann Fudge (MBA 1977); Nien-he Hsieh (Kim B. Clark Professor of Business Administration); By: Catherine O’Neill Grace; Illustrations by Victo ngai
    • 01 Jun 2025
    • HBS Magazine

    Sound Bites: Joy to the World

    Re: Justin Pasquariello (MBA 2010)

More Related Stories

Stories Featuring Gordon Medenica

    • 23 Oct 2018
    • NBC: Today Show

    Do You Feel Lucky?

    Re: Gordon Medenica (MBA 1979)
 
 
 
ǁ
Campus Map
External Relations
Harvard Business School
Teele Hall
Soldiers Field
Boston, MA 02163
Phone: 1.617.495.6890
Email: alumni+hbs.edu
→Map & Directions
→More Contact Information
  • Make a Gift
  • Site Map
  • Jobs
  • Harvard University
  • Trademarks
  • Policies
  • Accessibility
  • Digital Accessibility
  • Terms of Use
Copyright © President & Fellows of Harvard College.