College alum talks biz ethics

With the Enron and Martha Stewart scandals pervading recent news coverage, many say that the ethics of the business world are lacking.

So it was appropriate that 1968 College graduate Richard Kelson stressed the need for stronger ethics and values to about 75 students Monday in a lecture in Logan Hall.

Kelson is an executive vice president of Alcoa, a Fortune 100 company that is also the world's largest wholly integrated aluminum company.

When Kelson became the chief financial officer of Alcoa in 1997, the company was facing tough times as the demand for aluminum was weak. Kelson changed the way the company performed its financial planning, and under his leadership, Alcoa's profits rose to the second highest level in the company's 110-year history, and its stock increased by 126 percent.

And for the leadership skills that helped him with Alcoa's turnaround, Kelson credits his Penn education.

"It gave me the ability to deal with all types of problems and to work with diverse people," he said.

Kelson said he believes learning is an integral part of leadership.

"I think you want to have a learning orientation and that is a life skill," he said. "Great leaders have a bias for learning."

But in addition to a love of learning, Kelson also said that a strong set of values is crucial.

"You need to have a value structure," Kelson said.

"This would not only help you in the black and white areas, but also in most of the gray areas."

Kelson said that a value structure is especially important during these tough times for businesses, when their leaders often make unethical decisions.

"Today, the expectations both in business and in general are higher than they have ever been," he said. "This creates stress, and that is why we need to have a value structure."

One of the people who Kelson said had a huge impact on him was current U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, who was the CEO of Alcoa when he appointed Kelson senior vice president of environment, health and safety.

"Paul taught me to get out of my comfort zone," Kelson said. "He also taught me that it was not only OK to aspire to ideals but necessary to do so."

School of Arts and Sciences Dean Samuel Preston said he was impressed by Kelson's lecture.

"I thought he was very insightful about the characteristics required to be a successful leader," Preston said. "He was very down to earth and spoke at a level that students very much appreciated."

College senior Lauren Sercander, one of the student directors of the Fox Leadership Program, which brought Kelson to Penn, said that his speech embodied the program's ideals.

She called Fox Leadership "the only program on campus that actually makes a close connection between Penn students and leaders of the outside world."

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