CEO Series: Unleash Your Leadership

A new executive leadership series launched in fall 2008 at the Lubin School of Business. The series, Unleash Your Leadership, features interviews with successful CEOs who are willing to share what shaped their leadership and career success. Stephen H. Baum, an executive coach to senior management leaders and former partner with global management consultants, Booz, Allen & Hamilton, will conduct interviews with industry thought leaders to provide students with an understanding of what builds character, appetite to lead, confidence to embrace risk, capacity to be decisive, ability to engage and inspire followers, and how important these qualities are in leading others.

Participating CEOs include:

Dick Parsons, Chairman, Time Warner - November 25, 2008
David Snow, CEO, Medco Health - February 4, 2009
David Liu, Cofounder, Chairman and CEO, The Knot Inc. - April 13, 2009
Simon Assaad, co-founder and co-CEO, Heavy - Date TBA

These events are open to the entire Pace community. RSVP is requested - click to register online. We hope you will join us for what promises to be dynamic and engaging sessions with business executives who know what it takes to be a successful leader.

Dick Parsons, Chairman, Time Warner
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
6:00-8:00 p.m.
Schimmel Theater
1 Pace Plaza, NYC

Richard D. Parsons is Chairman of the Board of Time Warner, whose businesses include filmed entertainment, interactive services, television networks, cable systems and publishing. From May 2002 to December 2007, Mr. Parsons served as Time Warner's Chief Executive Officer. He became Chairman of the Board in May 2003.

As CEO, Mr. Parsons led Time Warner's turnaround and set the company on a solid path toward achieving sustainable growth. In the process, he put in place the industry's most experienced and successful management team, strengthened the company's balance sheet and simplified its corporate structure, and carried out a disciplined approach to realigning the company's portfolio of assets to improve returns. In its January 2005 report on America's Best CEOs, Institutional Investor magazine named Mr. Parsons the top CEO in the entertainment industry.

Mr. Parsons joined Time Warner as its President in February 1995, and has been a member of the company's Board of Directors since January 1991. As President, he oversaw the company's filmed entertainment and music businesses, and all corporate staff functions, including financial activities, legal affairs, public affairs and administration.

Before becoming President of Time Warner, Mr. Parsons was Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Dime Bancorp, Inc., one of the largest thrift institutions in the United States. Previously, he was the managing partner of the New York law firm Patterson, Belknap, Webb & Tyler. Prior to that, he held various positions in state and federal government, as counsel for Nelson Rockefeller and as a senior White House aide under President Gerald Ford. Mr. Parsons received his undergraduate education at the University of Hawaii and his legal training at Union University's Albany Law School.

Mr. Parsons' civic and non-profit commitments include Co-Chairman of the Mayor's Commission on Economic Opportunity in New York; Chairman Emeritus of the Partnership for New York City; Chairman of the Apollo Theatre Foundation and service on the boards of Howard University, the Museum of Modern Art and the American Museum of Natural History. He also serves on the boards of Citigroup and Estée Lauder.

David B. Snow, Jr., Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Medco Health
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
5:30 p.m. - 7:30 p.m.
New York City campus


David B. Snow, Jr., Medco's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, is a health care industry veteran, innovator and entrepreneur who has created and implemented solutions to manage the rising costs of health care for 30 years. Mr. Snow joined Medco, one of the nation's leading pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), in March 2003 as President and CEO, and added Chairman to his title in June 2003.

Prior to Medco, Mr. Snow was President and Chief Operating Officer at Wellchoice, Inc. (formerly Empire BlueCross BlueShield). Throughout his expansive career, he has served in executive leadership roles for several companies including Oxford Health Plans, American International Healthcare, Inc. and US HealthCare, Inc. He also co-founded and served as President and CEO of Managed Healthcare Systems, Inc., which was later renamed AmeriChoice.

Mr. Snow earned a master's degree in health care administration from Duke University in 1978 and holds a bachelor's of science degree in economics from Bates College (1976).

David Liu, Cofounder, Chairman and CEO, The Knot Inc.
Monday, April 13, 2009
6:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m.
1 Place Plaza, NYC

David Liu is cofounder and CEO of The Knot Inc. (NASDAQ: KNOT; www.theknot.com), a leading lifestage media company.

In 1996, Liu and his business partners (including wife Carley Roney) predicted that the emergence of Internet technology would become the perfect solution to the frustrating, antiquated process of planning a wedding. Their vision: to launch a bridal media brand with a single online destination that would reinvent the $70 billion wedding industry by appealing to modern couples and providing 24/7 access to stylish editorial content, modern advice, thousands of local professionals, and an online community. The Knot has become the nation's #1 wedding resource and most trafficked online wedding destination with more than 100 million monthly page views and over 1.5 million registered members.

Through innovative, resilient business practices, Liu drove The Knot Inc. from an Internet start-up to a multimillion-dollar media leader in the wedding and lifestyle category with more than 500 employees. Under Liu's leadership, the company's portfolio of brands and services grew beyond weddings into newlywed and parenting spaces. Liu also led the acquisition of the company's closest competitor, WeddingChannel, Inc., uniting two leaders in the online bridal industry.

Liu has led his team to extend each brand of The Knot Inc. to the offline world with a host of magazines, books, and television broadcasts, as well as a massive merchandising arm, which includes a full-service gift registry and an Internet wedding supplies store. Liu has also been the guiding force in the company's exploration of broadband technology, negotiating partnerships with Comcast on the video-on-demand front and launching one of the Internet's first-ever 24/7 streaming video TV channels, The Knot TV.

Liu helped The Knot raise more than $35 million in its IPO in early December 1999, and over $70 million in financing from leaders such as Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, QVC, Inc., The May Department Stores Company, T. Rowe Price, and Capital Research. In 2003, The Knot announced its first profitability milestone, and in April 2005, the company was officially relisted on the national NASDAQ market under the symbol "KNOT." In 2008, Liu was named Ernst & Young's Metro Area Entrepreneur of the Year.

Prior to founding The Knot, Liu built a nine-year career in digital production and management. In 1993, he founded RunTime Inc., a CD-ROM development firm producing award-winning titles for clients including the Smithsonian Institute, Intel, and AT&T. Liu received his BFA in film and television from New York University.

Simon Assaad, co-founder and co-CEO, Heavy
Date TBA
Simon Assaad is the co-founder and co-CEO of Heavy, a leading broadband video company targeting young men. Mr. Assaad is also Co-CEO and founder of Husky Media, a broadband video advertising platform for premium content. Husky's mission is to "Make Video Valuable" for all publishers, advertisers and consumers across the web.

Fresh out of university in Australia, starting as a waiter on the graveyard shift in a Greenwich Village caféé, Mr. Assaad seized the opportunity to work as an assistant on an independent film. He quickly rose to be the producer and fell in love with new media. With a passionate belief of the future that lies in internet distribution, he founded Heavy and kept it alive during dark periods operating as a service to advertising agencies.

Mr. Assaad frequently presents Heavy's vision for a 21st Century media company at international forums and symposiums. He is a quoted expert in the broadband video space in leading periodicals including the Wall Street Journal, The International Herald Tribune, and The New York Times.

Mr. Assaad moved from his native Australia in 1993, and lives with his wife Amy in New Jersey.

Stephen H. Baum, executive coach to senior management leaders and former partner with global management consultants, Booz Allen & Hamilton

My mission is not only to help established leaders take their performance and contentment up a notch, but also to help those who aspire to higher, more demanding levels of responsibility to grow their leadership core.

As Chair of a Vistage International CEO peer advisory group in New York City, I have an inside view of today's leaders of small business and large enterprises, private and public, across a diverse set of businesses. I facilitate the group meetings and provide one-to-one coaching to the men and women who are members.

As Host of the master class series, Unleash Your Leadership, it is my privilege to interview successful CEOs who are willing to share what shaped their leadership from early childhood through later decades. The recollections of such leaders as Daryl Brewster (Krispy Kreme Doughnuts),Mike Critelli (Pitney Bowes), Sam DiPiazza (Price Waterhouse Coopers), Bob Greifeld (NASDAQ), Bernard Schwartz (Loral) and Sir Martin Sorrell (WPP advertising) provide students an understanding of what builds character, appetite to lead, confidence to embrace risk, capacity to be decisive and ability to engage and inspire followers and how important these are in leading others. This is also the subject of my book whose focus is on how ordinary people become extraordinary leaders.

Harvard Community Partners of Connecticut is a ground-breaking volunteer organization assembling teams of alumni to coach good not-for-profits toward excellence in leadership. One of my contributions to these activities has been to facilitate workshops for executive directors and their board chairs.

As a partner with Booz Allen & Hamilton, the global consultancy, CEOs of Sony Pictures, Turner Entertainment, NBC West Coast, Marriott Hotels, Florida Power & Light, Ecolab and other large enterprises provided me opportunities to orchestrate their senior management retreats and act as advisor to the boss and senior team.

All of the above, described in greater detail on www.stephenhbaumleadership.com and the blog, help me provide private coaching to senior leaders of organizations and to share not only my insights but also those of my CEOs in articles, blog comments and videos. Some of these have been visible on Huffington Post, Industry Week and radio interviews on KVON (Napa) and KFNN (Phoenix) to name a few.

Clearly, education and public service have also shaped my abilities: senior examiner, site visit leader and instructor of examiners for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award; lectures and student discussions on leadership given at Baruch College; chief judge of the Connecticut Excellence Award; former board memberships such as The Actors Studio Drama School and American Ballroom Theater Company; degrees in chemical engineering from Princeton University and MIT and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Hobbies including scuba diving and jazz piano.