ANDREW SHURTLEFF
Alumni Profile Alumni Profile
The Frederick S. Morton Student Award — named for Marshall Morton’s father, who was a Darden professor — is presented each year to a Second Year student in recognition of exceptional leadership within the Darden community. The award recipient in turn selects the winner of the Frederick S. Morton Faculty Award, which honors the member of the teaching faculty who best fostered the student’s leadership ability while at Darden.
MARSHALL MORTON (CLAS ’70, MBA ’72) Appreciates Enduring Values in a Changing World “If you can’t figure out how to harness change, you’ll get left behind,” said Marshall Morton (CLAS ’70, MBA ’72). “That’s something I’ve been taught time and time again.” Morton knows about change. During his 23-year tenure at Media General — first as chief financial officer and then as chief executive officer — he played a key role in successfully guiding the company through an industry undergoing profound transformation. “When I arrived at Media General in 1989, the company owned three newspapers, three TV stations, a number of specialty magazines and a roofing company that made shingles out of old newspapers,” Morton said. By the time he retired at the end of 2012, the company had refashioned itself into a leading provider of broadcast and digital news, information and entertainment. “We had to change as a result of a changing population that gets its information in different ways,” he said. “We really had to rethink what we were.” According to Morton, a critical element of successfully managing change is the ability to understand what should stay the same. “You have to recognize that some principles and approaches are universal,” he explained. Darden provided Morton with an enduring set of skills that enabled him to overcome the enormous financial and industry challenges of the Internet era. His superb professors and
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THE DARDEN REPORT
classmates taught him to take an analytical perspective on strategic decision-making and taught him that— with respect to financial analysis — there’s no substitute for numbers that add up. “Darden’s value for someone like me, who switched from working for a textile company [WestPoint-Pepperell] to Media General, is that it taught me how to think and evaluate,” he said. “That’s stuck with me. My license plate is EVALU8.” Given the scope of change in the world today, Morton said he’s pleased to see the School stick to the strengths that have long ensured the value of a Darden education: a rigorous, practically oriented case-based curriculum and student-teacher relationships that are based on dialogue and mentorship. “Darden has paid attention to changing opportunities in very effective ways,” observed Morton. “But I’m tremendously proud that it has held on to its core values.” Morton and his wife, the former Caroline Sanders, have two children and five grandchildren, and they reside in Richmond, Virginia. On 30 June 2014, Morton will be rolling off of the Darden School Foundation Board of Trustees, having served two terms.
— Mary Summers Whittle