The Chief Executive Leadership Institute Nation's CEOs Gather to Redefine Their Jobs and Celebrate Vanguard Founder Jack Bogle

In the aftermath of the Bush Administration's newly announced economic policy package and the Conference Board's recent final recommendations on needed corporate governance reforms, more than 100 CEOs of the nation's largest firms gathered to discuss how new governance requirements, changing public scrutiny, and global geopolitics have changed their job definitions.  The conference, "Building and Restoring Trust," was the 46^th CEO Summit of The Chief Executive Leadership Institute (CELI) of the Yale School of Management (SOM) - the nation's original CEO College - and was held at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, New York City, January 14-15, 2003.

Yale School of Management alumni attending the conference included: Neal Keny-Guyer '82, CEO, Mercy Corps; Stuart R. Patterson '83, CEO, SpeechWorks International; Frederick O. Terrell '82, CEO, Provender Capital Group; Sheldon Sussman '83, Managing Director, Rabobank International; Leigh Williams '90, SVP & Chief Privacy Officer, Fidelity Investments.

Other participants included: U.S. Labor Secretary Elaine Chao; James Copeland, CEO of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu; Eugene O'Kelly, CEO KPMG LLP; Rajat Gupta, Managing Director-Worldwide McKinsey & Co; John Tyson, CEO Tyson Foods; Richard Cavanagh, CEO The Conference Board; Douglas Warner, former CEO J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.; Rick Goings, CEO Tupperware; Stuart Miller, CEO Lennar; Toshiaki Taguchi, CEO Toyota Motors North America; Philip Lader, Chairman WPP Group; Mac Crawford, CEO Caremark Rx; legendary CEO of American Express James Robinson III; Brian Gallagher, CEO United Way of America; Peter Bell, CEO CARE USA; Ellen Futter, President American Museum of Natural History; Gregory Prince, President Hampshire College; Thomas James, CEO Raymond James Financial; James Hagedorn, CEO The Scotts Company, and 90 other prominent leaders across sectors and two dozen distinguished management scholars from Yale, Harvard, Columbia, NYU, Fordham, and other universities.

Bill George, former CEO of Medtronic, spoke for the group in presenting the institute's renowned Legend in Leadership Award to The Vanguard Group founder Jack Bogle.  Bogle, a pioneer in defending the individual investor for 50 years, is considered a father of the American corporate governance reform movement.  He has long been an outspoken critic on the ways many mutual funds are marketed and high fees are hidden.  In an inspirational model of resilience, he founded Vanguard in 1974 after having been fired as President of the Wellington Management Company.  Today Vanguard is the second largest mutual fund organization comprising more than 100 mutual funds with assets totaling over $600 billion.  The much-admired Vanguard 500 Index Fund is the world's first index mutual fund.  Fortune magazine has named Bogle one the four "Giants of the Investment Industry of the 20th Century."

Frequently quoted in the business media for guidance on investing and on governance reform, Bogle has written several books, his fourth and most recent book, Character Counts.  Bogle presently serves on the Conference Board Blue Ribbon Commission of Public Trust and Enterprise.

"American investors and financial markets have been fortunate that Jack Bogle has been a beacon of light and integrity through some dark financial times," comments Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, Associate Dean of Yale SOM and President of Yale's Chief Executive Leadership Institute.  "We are all great beneficiaries of the low cost/high integrity model of financial service innovations which Bogle has introduced.  With his books on character and his service to commissions on public trust and enterprise, Jack Bogle is the ideal recipient of the Legend in Leadership Award," Sonnenfeld continued.

Past winners of this award include: Home Depot founder Bernard Marcus; Coca Cola President Donald Keough; PepsiCo CEO Roger Enrico; musician entrepreneur Quincy Jones; Viacom CEO Sumner Redstone; catalogue entrepreneur Lillian Vernon; Dunkin Donuts founder Bill Rosenberg; McKinsey Founder Marvin Bower; Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham; advertising CEO and presently Assistant Secretary of State Charlotte Beers; Bell South CEO John Clendenin; Wal-mart CEO David Glass; Rich Teerlink CEO of Harley-Davidson; Gordon Binder CEO of Amgen; Bill George of Medtronic; and Kemmons Wilson creator of Holiday Inns. 

The Chief Executive Leadership Institute is part of Yale SOM.  It was founded in 1989 to provide original research on leadership and lively, current educational forums through peer-driven learning for accomplished leaders across sectors.  CELI is a combination think tank and corporate management education center that brings Yale faculty and students into a closer learning partnership with prominent leaders across sectors.  CELI's invitation only events remain the nation's only confidential, peer-driven CEO learning experience.

"CEO's are easily lionized or vilified but rarely given the opportunity to make themselves vulnerable for genuine learning- especially in an off-the-record setting," comments CELI founder Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, associate dean of executive programs at Yale SOM. 

In conjunction with the summit for corporate leaders, CELI held a Leadership Exchange and Analysis Program (LEAP) for fast rising top executives. 

The day before the CEO Leadership Summit, over a dozen academics from premier business schools around the country joined with a dozen chief operating, finance, privacy, marketing, and technology officers for an intensive 28-hour roundtable.  The scholars discussed topics from current best sellers and soon-to-be-published studies  - from strategy to governance, and from finance reform to leading change. 

LEAP participants from companies such as Fidelity Investments, Pepsi Bottling, Rabobank, MetLife and Alcan were also invited to sit in as observers during the CEO Summit.  Over the subsequent six months, all LEAP executives will also participate in a field exchange bringing them side by side with the CEO and top management of a host company.

"Many of our LEAP alums have gone on to become CEOs themselves.  They've told us that having the chance to observe a wide variety of CEO leadership styles by sitting in on the CEO Summit and going to another company really helped them to think beyond their functional experience and enhance their external sophistication as a top leader," says Sonnenfeld.

The Yale SOM's CELI expects to hold another CEO Summit in late June 2003 in Washington D.C. 

Also Associate Dean Jeffrey Sonnenfeld talks about Ethics Education and the new emphasis on morality at B-schools and on corporate boards, a talk he gave recently at BW's CEO Summit in Washington, D.C.