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Wharton Leader
Paul Miller, W’50, WG’51
The Philosopher of
Investment Management
 Early in his career, Paul Miller got
a first-hand lesson in what became
his greatest motivating principle.
“I had worked at the Federal
Reserve Bank and then decided to go into
the investment management business,
ending up at Drexel and Company,” said
Miller. “It was a blue-blood, white-shoe
firm, and I was definitely not from
Philadelphia society, so I was not really
optimistic about my future success there.
So it was to my great surprise when they
made me a partner at age 29,” said Miller,
a Trustee Emeritus of the University and a
former Board of Trustees chair. “I am a great
believer in meritocracy.”
While Miller spent the rest of his working
life in managing money – first at Drexel
and then at his own firm, Miller, Anderson
& Sherrerd – his life was never entirely subsumed
by his work. At 39, he became a
trustee of the University and served on the
board for the next 31 years, eight as board
chair. In September 2007, his grandson,
Jake Merrill, entered the University as a
Wharton freshman, becoming the fourth
generation of the family to attend Penn.
He has also been on the board of such
diverse organizations as the World Wildlife
Fund, the Ford Foundation, the Colonial
Williamsburg Foundation, and the Pew
Charitable Trusts, and has been elected a
member of the American Philosophical
Society.
“I found that in the investment management
business, unless you have ties with the
real world out there, you tend to be unrealistic
in your approach. It is not just looking
at annual and quarterly reports,” said
Miller. He said he was not only proud to be
a member of eight different corporate boards
of directors – including Rohm and Haas,
Hewlett Packard, and the Mead Paper
Company – but found it enlightening and,
ultimately, necessary for his business education.
“They gave me the view of the realism of
the world, not just the statistics of those
annual reports.”
Miller’s firm was sold to Morgan Stanley,
and he retired in 1996. Writing his memoirs
helped him clarify his principles. Miller has
set down his views in his memoirs, nearly 300
pages of them. He said he is old-fashioned in
some ways and progressive in others.
“I can be frank to a fault, especially in
the parts of the memoirs that are of things I
am now past doing,” he said. “But they also
go into my views on life – of religion and
politics and philosophy.”
“I am not a religious person. I’m an
atheist or an agnostic, depending on what
day you catch me,” he said. “But I do
believe in some eternal truths.”
“I believe in hard work and earning your
way, which I guess is nothing unusual,” he
said.
“I believe that in business, having a
piece of the action lends people to doing
better work. Early on in our firm, we made
young people into partners. I think we had
24 of them at one point. I believe in splitting
the pie with people who are dedicated.”
“But more than anything, I believe that
success is living up to one’s potential,”
Miller continued. “It is not about money,
but finding out what your potential is and
striving for it. If you don’t do that, then you
are inevitably going to be unhappy.”
— Robert Strauss
Wharton Leader
Violet E. Awotwi, WG’93
Young Global Leader,
Social Entrepreneur
 With a Wharton MBA in hand,
Violet Awotwi was on her
way to a distinguished private-
sector business career.
Then her husband got a new job in his native
Ghana. The move revived her long-held interest
in social entrepreneurism.
“I found I would have the opportunity to
live my passion and my dream,” said Awotwi.
“I had always wanted to work toward the
empowerment of women and this was going to
be the chance.”
Awotwi started up the first of several
nonprofit corporations. She founded the
Women’s Initiative for Self Empowerment
(WISE) to help women who had been
victims of sexual abuse or domestic violence
in Ghana.
“I originally wanted to volunteer, but then
I found that there were no organizations
involved in working with these women,” she
said. “So I started working with community
leaders to start one.”
Awotwi had already been successful in
several fields unrelated to that nonprofit
work. She grew up in Nigeria where she got
a degree in geology and started working for
Chevron there, as a geologist and then in
marketing.
After receiving her MBA in finance and
strategy she started out at the high-tech company
Hewlett Packard. While working there, she
became interested in feminist issues and started
masters work in feminist clinical psychology —
and then came the unexpected move to Ghana.
“Because of my mother’s example, I was
always interested in working in the public sector,
but then I realized there was no reason I couldn’t
do good and make money, too,” she said.
“There are many lessons nonprofits can learn
from the private sector, and I hope I can accomplish
that.”
After setting up WISE — funding it mostly
through a for-profit consulting business she was
doing at the same time — and getting community
leaders to connect with health, counseling
and governmental providers, Awotwi founded
WIELD, the Women’s Initiative for
Empowerment and Leadership Development.
WIELD takes young women and girls, even as
young as 7, and has them mentored by women
who have already been successful in their fields.
Following the lead of similar programs in the
United States, WIELD has set about to help
women be more assertive in business and politics
in Africa, where they are just now finding
their way toward equality in many governments
and businesses.
Awotwi and her husband recently relocated
back to the United States, but that, she said, has
only made her commitment to empowerment,
particularly in the political sphere, for women
stronger. She has created iKNOW Politics, an
interactive website for women around the world
to exchange ideas and get involved with democracy
and political participation.
“What I found while doing WISE and
WIELD was that women need to get involved
in their communities in a political way,” she
said. “With iKNOW Politics, women can log
onto the network and have resources from the
United Nations to European organizations to
American politicians. Here they can learn about
campaign financing and all other sorts of issues
and share experiences with women who have
been successful.”
Awotwi has been named a Young Global
Leader by the World Economic Forum and
was featured in Newsweek in 2005 as one of the
world’s emerging leaders under 40.
“I’m just a social entrepreneur at heart,”
she said. “Around the world, women need to
be empowered and I want to do a small part
in advancing that.”
— Robert Strauss
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