Leadership Spotlight

Continued from previous page

Continual Reinvention and Learning

Beth Kaplan, W'80, WG'81
Co-founder and Managing Partner, Axcel Partners, LLC, Baltimore

Today when I look back, I've taken more risk with my career than I ever thought I would take," says Beth Kaplan.

It has paid off personally and professionally. She's achieved success in several careers, including retail, a sector she never considered as a student, and venture capital for the internet, a business-transforming phenomenon that barely existed in 1981. Now she's a co- founder and principal of Axcel Partners, LLC, a Baltimore- based venture capital firm. Kaplan's continual career reinvention might have seemed eccentric to her 22-year-old self, but her adaptation illustrates the flexibility and constant learning rewarded—and required—in today's job market.

In hindsight, her student years show signs of the varied career she'd carve out. Her friend and classmate Ann Marks recalls, "Beth was always in everything." Chairman of the Student Activities Council, editor of the Wharton Account, choreographer for the Wharton Follies, radio host for Focus on Youth, manager of Hill House, Beth's interests were clearly too broad to be fulfilled with a single career—or a single degree. She graduated with both BS Econ and MBA degrees. She says modestly, "I did a range of things at Wharton, but five years is a long tenure."

Her post-Wharton journey began at Procter & Gamble. "The context of the work was everything that I loved," she says. "It was strategic, it was marketing driven, and it was about leadership and teamwork. Sometimes people say, ˇ®I never really used what I learned in business school,' but I used what I learned in business school practically every day."

She stayed for 17 years, eventually moving to Baltimore to become president of Noxell, P&G's domestic cosmetics division. She planned to stay for life, but left to join the "other side" of the consumer equation as senior executive vice president of marketing for Rite Aid. "A lot of people thought I lost gray matter upstairs," she says of her decision. While now retail is a hot area centered at Wharton's Jay H. Baker Retail Initiative, at the time her career move seemed unorthodox for a successful consumer products executive.

"It's not for the faint of heart," she says of the change. "You grow up in one system, and then you move to a different system." She saw an opportunity to make an impact on Rite Aid, a company with lean management and an aggressive growth strategy. Some fundamentals of the business were the same, but she had to learn how to manage purchasing, operations, and human resources in a retail environment. She worked long hours six days a week, and she loved it. Kaplan brought insight from P&G and rebuilt the store design around its main customer—women. She built the beauty business through innovative initiatives, including the launch of Rite Aid's wildly successful cosmetic money-back guarantee. She augmented the vitamin and nutrition lines, eventually partnering with GNC, and increased floor space for profitable greeting cards.

In 1999, the Internet was booming. Rite Aid invested in Drugstore.com, and Kaplan herself moved into the new frontier with the Internet Capital Group of Wayne, PA. Recruited by a Wharton contact, she became a managing Director of Operations. Once again, she was learning a brand-new business. "It was like drinking from a fire hose," she says, "a totally different kind of work, sitting on boards, helping to shape business models, and coaching young management teams."

Internet Capital Group at that time had raised billions through an IPO, but the landscape was about to change when the Internet stock bubble burst. Kaplan toughed it out to enter venture capital on her own terms with her own strategy. In 2001 she and her husband co-founded Axcel Partners, LLC. She's continued with that venture ever since, although the ever-energetic Kaplan couldn't resist another turn in retail, serving as executive vice president and general merchandise manager for Bath and Body Works flagship stores, a Limited Brands beauty superstore, from 2002 to 2005. "It really was an interesting combination of all my experiences," she says. "I was in charge of brand management, retail and even venture capital, so it was very much like a start-up." The downside to her dual role was that she was commuting from her home in Baltimore, living during the week in a hotel near Limited Brands' Ohio headquarters. She logged long days without distractions, but she admits "after a few years it got a little old."

Now she concentrates on Axcel Partners, sitting on the boards for some of her promising investments like MinuteClinic, a chain of no-appointment medical offices hosted inside drugstores. Even more crucially, she has time for her personal life. Her philanthropic and volunteer activity includes a long commitment to Wharton that has deepened in recent years as she was chairman of the Wharton Undergraduate Board, and was recently appointed to the Wharton Board of Overseers.

"My father passed away about a year ago, and it was really important for me to endow a scholarship in his memory," she says. "Meeting the first scholarship winner was very touching—my dad's name was carried on through the scholarship, and I'm able to provide an opportunity to another young woman." Even more importantly, her new schedule allows her more time for her two young sons. "I didn't want to wake up one day, and say, ˇ®Oh no, they grew up and I wasn't even there!'" says Kaplan. "Everything that I learned at Wharton has allowed me to get where I am in my life. And that means that now, for the first time I have a level of flexibility to enjoy it."