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Valuable Lessons From Darden— Kirby Adams (MBA ’79) KIRBY ADAMS was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia, and graduated in 1977 from Auburn University with a degree in industrial engineering. From college, he went straight to Darden, making him one of the youngest members of his graduating class. “As one of the youngest students, I was also the least experienced,” Adams recalls. “Therefore, I learned a bit of humility — and the value of listening and learning with my mouth closed.” Adams was impressed that the School had received top ratings and used the case method in the classroom. “I had no previous connections to Darden,” says Adams. “I liked that Darden gave me a chance to get my MBA without having to start a full-time job. I was in study mode.” Adams has many significant memories of his time at Darden, especially of the people in his class and the teamwork. “One of my finest moments at Darden was representing the School in 1979 in New York City at a national MBA school championship,” he says. “Our five-person team was up against [students from] other great business schools in a case method contest. Our case was Joseph Schlitz Brewing. I was nominated as the chairman, and we won the tournament with our analysis and presentation. It was a great day!” Since graduating from Darden, Adams has had a successful career as an international CEO in the petroleum, mining and metals industries, helping to build leading businesses in the United States, Australia, Europe, China, India and throughout the world. Some of his key business achievements include growing Australia’s BHP Steel into a global leader and restructuring Tata Steel Europe to become Europe’s second largest steel company. “Darden gave me a great generalist management education,” Adams says. “The need to consider all perspectives and the ability to present with confidence to a large group ultimately became my best assets as a CEO.” Adams, 55, recently retired from the Tata Steel Group. He currently lives in Melbourne, Australia, and Lake Tahoe, Nevada, with his partner and enjoys skiing, swimming and gardening. He still values the lessons he learned at Darden. “Empathy, humility and listening will go a long way in business — and in life,” he says, “because they are increasingly rare attributes.” running the sport of rugby in Jamaica as the CEO of the Jamaica Rugby Football Union. I am having a great time working with young Jamaicans and trying to instill the values of hard work and good sportsmanship in them (smile). “I’m heading off to New Zealand in a few weeks’ time to watch the Rugby World Cup in New Zealand and hope to spend some time travelling around the North Island (from Auckland to Wellington). So I’ll miss a trip back to U.Va. to see the football team (some of my friends who were law students during our days at U.Va. make an annual visit to the campus to see the team play, and I hope to join them next year).” After 15 years overseas with Hines in Barcelona and London, Jay and Heather Wyper have moved their base of operations back to the United States and bought a house in Houston. This “next phase” in life is to be closer to their two 44 THE DARDEN REPORT • Fall/Winter 2011
children, who are 20 and 24 and living in the United States. The shift notwithstanding, Jay reports that he is still the managing director of Hines business in the United Kingdom as well as a managing director of the Europe/MENA business and participates on Hines global task forces like the Sustainability Task Force. He is in Europe/United Kingdom at least two weeks a month. So in Jay’s words, the business is the same but the closets and airports have moved! John Marshall reports, “I’m in a new chapter of my career/life. Nowhere close to retirement ready (too many years in government, a price of which is underfunded retirement savings). So, figuring I have one good run left, I’ve started up a cloud/IT services company that helps entities that do business with government manage their compliance reporting workloads (mostly manual) more efficiently and effectively — kind of like TurboTax. Our
first offering is a grant reporting service for research universities — we can save them 20 to 30 FTEs by simplifying and moving to the cloud a highly complex, mostly manual reporting workload. Having a lot of fun and using more of the Darden tool-kit (at least the ones I can remember!) than ever before. Very exciting!” Frederic Guyonneau writes that “2011 started off nicely with a family vacation to Hong Kong and Beijing as both girls’ spring breaks fell on the same week. It turned out to be a fantastic adventure and the opportunity for the two girls to get a quick sense of Asia. We went there in early March, and it turned out to be the ideal time, with few foreign and domestic tourists, and very short to no lines at all. Never in my life would I have thought that at 6.0 feet, I would be thought of as an NBA player and be asked to pose for pictures with total strangers. As for the girls, they were featured in dozens of photos with people mesmerized by blue eyes and blonde hair. “Our oldest daughter Margaux graduated from U.Va. last May with a double major in Latin American studies and Spanish and, a few days later, joined a start-up hi-tech venture in Manhattan as community manager. Look up Tout.com to find a creative and innovative approach to managing and sending e-mails. Since she moved to New York City in early June, and as I travel often to the home office in New Jersey, I have had more opportunities to have dinner with her than in the past four years at U.Va., which is really enjoyable to break up a business trip. “Her sister Morgan is a sophomore in the business program at the University of South Carolina (USC). One of the benefits of USC, as a parent, is that one can cheer for a real football team, or even drive to Columbia for solid tailgating and a thrilling game. Morgan is now ‘Greek Village ambassador,’ guiding visitors and prospective students through the corner of the university where all the sorority and fraternity houses have been built. “Laura has taken on a new career and now applies her skills and parenting talents as a French teacher at Roswell High School. After many years of substituting, she figured she might as well do it fulltime now that the kids are away and as I continue to walk my beat in Brazil, Mexico (trying not to get my head lopped off) or other parts of the world: just came back from Colombo, arguably one of the hardest places to reach, where we have a very large manufacturing complex. “Amidst all the great blessings we’ve had this year, my mom passed away a few months ago after several difficult months, but in spite of the distance, my sister and I took the time to visit and be with her, making the loss less painful.” I am pleased to announce that T. Scott Coleman, age 57 with insulin-dependent diabetes, has added another major swim to his already impressive resume!! He crossed the Gibraltar Strait on Monday morning, 8 August 2011, in 4 hours, 2 minutes and 58 seconds. He had stellar
