The Burton D. Morgan Foundation - Entrepreneurship
Lecture Series and Related Events
Burton D. Morgan was an innovator and avid supporter of free enterprise, having founded or invested in numerous start-up companies in his lifetime. The Burton D. Morgan Foundation seeks to cultivate that spirit in the bright, creative, and ambitious minds found at Kenyon College.
Our fourth year in the series of individual presenters continues to provide the college community with insights to entrepreneurial thinking and actions from a variety of fields. Watch this site for upcoming lectures.
Burton D. Morgan Lecture Series 2009 - 10
Billy Beane, Parent '12
September 15, 2009
Common Hour 11:10 a.m.
Higley Auditorium
"Finding Undervalued Assets in an Inefficient World"
Billy Beane is Vice President and General Manager, Oakland Athletics and subject of the book, Moneyball. During his talk, he shared his decision to forgo an athletic scholarship to Stanford to play professional baseball for 10-years. After his playing career, Billy was able to make the transition to baseball executive and has built world-class teams using data-driven metrics to recruit and trade players for the Oakland Athletics. He also spoke about sports executives of the future, who are well-educated and use rational thinking and statistical analysis to measure business success.
Marshall Chapin '94
October 1, 2009
4:10 p.m.
Higley Auditorium
"The Greenest Kilowatt-Hour is the One Never Used; Reflections on Entrepreneurship and the Cleantech Revolution."
Marshall Chapin is Senior Vice President of Business Development for EnerNOC, Inc., an energy management company. Cleantech is the use of products and practices that improve energy efficiency and reduce costs and consumption. Marshall discussed the current state of the global environment, and then talk about the work that he and others are doing to managed the use of electricity and lower our consumption of fossil fuels.
At the end of his talk, Marshall took a few minutes to share his personal thoughts on entrepreneurship and liberal arts, or "the five things he wishes someone would have told him" when he was a student at Kenyon.
1. Be intellectually curious: engage in passionate debate and ask tons of questions. And if you don't understand, ask again.
2. Understand risk and take some: learn to be comfortable with failure (but not too comfortable!)
3. If you want something, go get it. Ask for the job, the interview, the internship, etc. ("Luck is the residue of design" -- Branch Rickey)
4. Good things happen to good people. Be empathetic. Be thoughtful -- give compliments, send thank you notes, remember birthdays.
5. Be passionate and have fun! People want to work with passionate people. Take your job seriously, but don't take yourself too seriously.
(DVDs are available now!)
Leonard Lodish '65, H '99
January 19, 2010
Common Hour 11:10 a.m.
Vice Dean, the Program for Social Impact and The Samuel R. Harrell Professor of Marketing, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. In addition to his Kenyon degree in mathematics, Len holds a Ph.D. from the Sloan School of Management at MIT. He is managing director of the Wharton Global Consulting Practicum which works with foreign M.B.A. on projects involving marketing in each other's countries.
Cathie Herrick, '90
February 25, 2010
Common Hour 11:10 a.m.
Olin Auditorium
Cathie is Principal and Media Director of Buying Time Media, an agency specializing in strategic media planning and competitive research and analysis. Clients have included the Clinton/Gore Presidential Campaign (1996), the Democratic National Committee and dozens of candidates for the U.S. Senate, U.S. House and state gubernatorial races.
Video recordings of presentations are available on DVD at the Career Development Office (CDO) and in Kenyon's library.
Did you miss a lecture?
If so, you can still it! Information on the 2006-07 , 2007-08, and 2008-09 Burton Morgan Lecture Series is available online, and DVDs are available for review.