FAIRFIELD COUNTY
BUSINESS
JOURNAL
ANNUAL
GATHERING
OFFERS VIEW
FROM THE TOP
BY BILL FALLON
[email protected]
FOR THE SECOND CONSECUTIVE YEAR, accounting firm Citrin Cooperman
gathered a panel of CEOs to UConn Stamford’s General Re Auditorium — filling
it again with an audience of 200 — for a give-and-take with Mark Fagan, managing partner at the firm.
The questions were designed to plumb the CEOs’ successes and harvest
their anecdotes. The CEOs responded with unguarded responses that ran from
whimsy — “I always wanted to be a ballerina” — to horror: “When you hit the
water at 74 mph it’s like hitting cement.”
The 2015 CEO Evolution panelists were Anne M. Mulcahy, former chairwoman and CEO of Xerox Corp. and current chairwoman of the board of trustees
for Save the Children; Denis J. Nayden, former chairman and CEO of GE Capital
and now managing partner of private equity firm Oak Hill Capital Partners; and
Thomas Kallish, who began textile companies Alliance Integrated Contracting
Corp. and Cocona and 5-year-old textile-apparel company Tommie Copper.
The tendency to seek commonalities among those who have made it to the
top was upended by their unique histories: Kallish is a high school dropout
who taught himself physics and who founded Tommie Copper after the battering of a 74 mph waterskiing accident; Mulcahy, an erstwhile ballerina, took
over one of the world’s corporate giants — Xerox — as it courted bankruptcy
and turned back into an investment-grade company; and Nayden was formerly in charge of 20 businesses under the GE Capital name, representing $555
billion in assets in 35 countries and is a self-described “hard-headed, formerly
hot-headed, Irishman.”
John A. Elliott, dean of the host/co-sponsor University of Connecticut School
of Business, introduced Fagan, promising — and soon enough delivering on —
“an exciting conversation.” Westfair Communications, publisher of the Fairfield
County Business Journal, also was a sponsor. Elliott had been introduced by
Westfair Associate Publisher Anne Jordan Duffy.
Kallish stitched together an entrepreneurial career in textiles and clothing,
first selling for a company at 20 and buying it at 22. For Nayden, the path to
success meant trying many things, and he offered the advice: “Do this and that
and after 10 years you’ll say, I liked this and I hated that.”
Mulcahy said, “Communicating with clarity is important so that people get
signed up and behind you. It’s most important in big companies to have people
understand the story. We need to tell a story people can relate to and are a part
of. I spent a lot of time telling the story. People do amazing things when they
Mark Fagan, managing partner of Citrin Cooperman’s Connecticut office.
Evolution panelists, from left, CEOs Thomas Kallish, Denis Nayden and Anne Mulcahy.
trust their leadership and believe the story.”
Nayden, citing the Xerox turnaround, said, “You kept it simple and changed
the whole dynamic.”
“It’s all about having the right partners,” Mulcahy said, adding with a bit
of reciprocating praise: “When no one was answering the phone, GE helped.
You were an amazing partner.”
The audience sat rapt throughout and after two hours peppered the panel
with questions concerning topics, including education and personal “back-of-abusiness card” reasons for their successes.
For the many disparities among the CEOs, similarities included a willingness — even an eagerness — to surround themselves with people who knew
more about specific issues than they did.
In response to a Fagan question about creating a network of trust, Kallish
said, “I’m not scared to hang around with people who are smarter than me. I’ve
spent the better part of four years to build my network. A CEO is the sum of his
parts and those parts are his network. That’s how it gets done.”
“You cannot grow and you cannot learn unless you take advantage of those
around you,” Nayden said. He described a CEO as an orchestra leader. “We’re
not playing one instrument; we’re the entire orchestra.
“It’s very important to decide what the most important things are and to
communicate them regularly,” said Nayden. “Keep it simple. Be consistent.
Working with 35 countries, I learned there have to be differences. The way I
communicate in Connecticut is going to be different than the way I communicate in Indonesia or New Jersey.”
Lacking a single bank — out of 58 — to sign off on $7 billion to forestall bankruptcy in 2001, Mulcahy explained to a friend the magnitude of the dilemma
she faced. The response, as she related it: “You need someone who’s really
powerful.” She made the bold call — a banker on the national stage —and immediately got the results she needed.
Mulcahy’s Xerox history also taught her about trust: both losing it and
regaining it. “It took just 90 days for Xerox to become junk; it took four years
to get it back to investment grade. It takes time to gain people’s confidence.”
Mulcahy’s teacher on time management was financier Warren Buffett. “They
want to see results,” she said, recalling Buffett’s advice. “Put some points on the
curve. It cleared the air. It absolutely made sense.” Toward that end, she visits
with customers and employees and considers herself the in-house chief communications officer: “I make sure 100,000 people actually get it.”
None of the CEOs set out to be a CEO and that was a major point. “Do what
you do best; follow your passion,” Mulcahy said. Nayden said many paths
offered many chances to see what works for a person and rare was the person
who knew from the start how he or she would end up.
“I am a hard-headed Irishman and I used to be a hard-headed Irishman
who was also hot-headed,” Nayden said. “That happens to me very rarely now
— mainly on the golf course. You can ruin a relationship in an instant. Don’t be
FAIRFIELD COUNTY BUSINESS JOURNAL • JUNE 22, 2015
John A. Elliott, dean of the University of Connecticut School of Business. Photos by Bill Fallon
Nathan Ives, UConn director of alumni relations and Andrea Vakos, senior director of development regional giving at the
UConn Foundation.
From left, Michael Diamond, managing partner of Affineco LLC; Michael Silverman, managing director of The Private
Bank and Stewart Strauss, president and CEO of Strauss Paper Co..
a tyrant. Don’t be someone who doesn’t listen. Don’t be the smartest person in
the room. It takes a lifetime to build a reputation and a nanosecond to lose it.”
“The chemistry that emerged between Anne, Denis and Tom demonstrated
that the challenges CEOs face are not dictated by the size or complexity of a
company or the industry it is in for that matter,” Fagan said afterward, calling the event informative and inspiring. “It was clear, they believe that great
leadership requires constant communication with employees and customers,
recruiting, developing and retaining talented employees, not being afraid to fail
and working hard.”
“Last year launched this important CEO Evolution series and this year was
another valuable discussion with a great panel,” Elliott said. “At UConn we teach
management, but we also engage with managers to create a dialogue that benefits all of us.”