A Dean's Legacy San Francisco EMBA Program Pays Tribute to Wharton West Founder
The graduation ceremonies for this year’s Wharton MBA Program for Executives class began early at San Francisco’s War Memorial on May 6, 2007. Before 10 a.m., the graduating students gathered in the spacious foyer, making last-minute adjustments to their gowns, hoods and caps before taking their seats at the front of the main hall.
“Chutzpah is a Yiddish word that I believe has made it into common usage,” said Vice Dean and Marketing Professor Len Lodish in his opening remarks to the school’s fifth graduating MBA class in San Francisco.
“Many people thought that opening Wharton West was audacious and very risky,” Lodish continued. “And I must tell you that Wharton West would not have happened had Pat Harker not had the chutzpah to commit the institution in a big, risky way.”
Lodish set the stage for a ceremony that paid special tribute to outgoing Dean Harker, who led many strategic initiatives during his seven-year tenure including the creation of Wharton’s west coast campus in San Francisco in 2001. Harker’s other notable accomplishments included forging an alliance with INSEAD, the leading non-U.S. based business school, overseeing the launch of Knowledge@Wharton and Wharton School Publishing, and leading Wharton to complete the largest fundraising campaign in its history.
Sharing a Vision of Leadership
After an introduction from David Pottruck, WG’72, former President and CEO of Charles Schwab, Dean Harker stepped up to the podium.
“Wharton West has fulfilled our greatest hopes, and your class bears that out,” he said. “We wanted to reach a new audience of students, to engage a broader set of industries and fill a market niche by providing the most rigorous MBA program for executives in the world.”
Harker also noted the accomplishments of these soon-to-be MBA graduates. “Instead of being ‘Wharton light,’ our MBA for executives program is more like ‘extreme Wharton’ – the same curriculum, a dramatically compressed schedule, commuting sometimes very long distances, separation from family, and holding down demanding full-time jobs. This program is not for the faint of heart! And that makes your completion of this program all the more impressive.”
In his vision of leadership, Harker pointed to the lessons he has learned from Wharton alumni. “In my seven years as the dean of Wharton, I’ve met many Wharton alumni around the world who embody this spirit of scholarly wisdom applied with personal integrity, men and women who are not afraid to do the right thing, take risks, fall flat on their faces, take responsibility for their mistakes – and get back up to try again.”
He then enumerated the five lessons of leadership he has learned: listen; put people first; keep your word; be resilient; and don’t seek success, seek meaning. Emphasizing the final lesson as the most important, Harker elaborated on the ways in which leaders create meaning by living “in service to mankind.”
The Dean Patrick Harker Leadership Award
The EMBA program also paid tribute to Dean Harker through the creation of the Dean Patrick Harker Leadership Award, given to a graduating student. The recipient is selected by the popular vote of the class as the person who best exemplifies Dean Harker’s spirit of innovative thinking, perseverance, and leadership.
Aidan Collins, WG’07, partner in Advisory Services at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, received the first Dean Harker award.
Originally from Limerick, Ireland, Collins came to the U.S.15 years ago on a one-way ticket with three suitcases and $1,000 in his pocket. He also brought a lengthy resume of IT consulting experience with IBM across Europe, Asia, Australia, and Central America, and he soon landed a job with Deloitte and Touche in Houston.
In the mid-1990’s Collins earned his first master’s degree in healthcare administration, and added healthcare operations to his consulting roster. By 1999, he made partner with the firm, and soon moved to San Francisco to work with a large healthcare client.
“It’s an issue of access and return,” said Collins. “We spend 15, 16, 17 percent of our GDP on healthcare, and yet there are 45 million without health insurance and no easy access to healthcare except through the emergency room, which is the most expensive way into the system.
“What we’re seeing is continually increasing costs and an inability to manage those costs, which minimizes returns on that investment. I see this as one of our greatest challenges.”
Collins says he will try to bring leadership to the healthcare field by helping to integrate it more effectively into healthcare practice in Northern California.
