The King Speech: A gallery from student and alumni business dinner

One of UW-Green Bay’s most prominent alumni shared observations and advice with top Business Administration and Accounting students and others at the annual Business Week Dinner Thursday night (March 8).

Mark King, a 1981 business graduate, is CEO and president of TaylorMade-adidas, the world’s largest golf equipment manufacturer. He addressed an audience of about 250 —mostly students but including alumni, faculty and local business leaders — on the stage of the Weidner Center. He talked about the company’s remarkable recovery from its late-1990s slump and growth from a $300 million per-year operation to a $1.6 billion global giant.

Among his take-aways for students? Go global (“Global is where the growth is”), always think several steps ahead (“Whoever leads change, wins the game”), and American managers need to embrace the trend of “distributed leadership,” which he says is already creating abundant opportunities for younger, tech-savvy employees, “with much more responsibility and creativity put on their shoulders.”

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Photos by Tammy Resulta for University Communication at UW-Green Bay