Taking Chances and FINDING Success

In 1983, Debu Purohit was the class speaker at his Muskingum University undergraduate commencement. Forty years later, he returned to his alma mater as the keynote speaker for the 2023 May Commencement. His Muskingum experience came full circle.

Debu’s journey to Muskingum University didn’t follow the traditional college search. Debu’s father worked for Shell, and he grew up living around the world. At the age of 12, he enrolled in The Doon School in India. When it was time to think about college, a friend convinced him to go to the States with him. He hadn’t heard of Muskingum but applied under the strong influence of his friend.

“My father was living in Singapore at the time, and when I told him my plans, he said he couldn’t find Muskingum on the map,” Debu reflects. “He was worried about me going to the other side of the world to a place he couldn’t find on the map.”

While he had been living away from home since he was 12, arriving at Muskingum was a shock. After being escorted to his room in Moore Hall, he sat down on his bed and thought, “Oh my goodness, I have made the biggest mistake of my life. But four years later, I was sad to leave.”

While he did not join a social club, he was actively engaged in campus activities, such as playing on the tennis and soccer teams, and acting in theater productions. His sophomore year he lived in a house on Montgomery that hosted poetry readings, and he served as an RA for two years in Moore Hall.

In providing the keynote address at the May Commencement, Debu provided insight and advice to our graduating students and their families along with our faculty and staff. Here are a few of his impactful remarks.

"We need the perspective of time to understand how certain events or people proved to be critical in determining the course of our lives. You see, life is lived forward, but understood backwards."

“We have a tendency to judge decisions based on whether we get the desired outcome, not on the quality of the decision. Remember, a good decision is a good decision, regardless of the outcome.”

In remembering his philosophy professor, Joe Elkins, he shared

“he would often tell us that we had a duty to be happy. I believe that happiness should not be the goal or the objective. Instead, happiness is the by-product of living a meaningful life.”

11,913 km

7,402.395 miles

In retrospect, Muskingum’s nurturing environment was the right place for him. The professors were so loving and kind. “I don’t know how many other people think about those who taught them, but I think about Joe Elkins, my philosophy professor, all the time, and history professor Lorle Porter; I went to her house so many times. And Herb Thomson. These people were wonderful, and they encouraged me.

“I have carried that experience and those people with me,” Debu said. “For instance, when I defended my dissertation in graduate school in Pittsburgh, my sister threw me a party. Many of my graduate school classmates and professors were there. When I walked into the room, Joe Elkins also was there. That is what Muskingum was.”

For Debu, it wasn’t just about learning things – math and economics – it was about feeling safe in the world.

After graduation, he went to Carnegie Mellon University where he earned his master’s degree in marketing and his doctorate in industrial administration. Debu shared how Muskingum prepared him for graduate school.

“That liberal arts foundation really helped. When it came time to do our own research and come up with our own ideas, that is where the benefits of a liberal arts education came through.”

Becoming a professor was never part of his plan. In fact, when he gave his commencement speech to his fellow classmates at his 1983 commencement, he joked about how worried they are “graduating and going out to the crazy world, and how one day some of us may even get graduate degrees, become professors, and have students like us. Then that will be the day to start worrying.”

He went into academia thinking that it would be easier to start there and then transition to a corporate job if he wanted to do that. Little did he know that his journey would culminate in a 31-year career in higher education, with most of that time at Duke University.

Debu began his career at Duke as an assistant professor and is currently the Ford Motor Company Distinguished Professor and Senior Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs at the Fuqua School of Business. While at the undergraduate level Duke focuses on the liberal arts, the Fuqua School of Business only serves graduate students. So, when he started at Duke right after graduate school, he was teaching many students who were older than he was. The emphasis on research was also something he had to embrace.

"One good thing about being at Duke was meeting my wife on campus. At Muskingum I had to keep explaining to people where I was from. At Duke, people always asked, ‘where is Muskingum?’ When I met a young woman who knew exactly where Muskingum was, I knew she was the one for me."

During his graduate studies, Debu’s research centered on how markets for durable goods, such as cars, computers, etc., can work more efficiently. Durable goods markets are novel because the products tend to last for long periods of time, they can either be rented or sold, and there is often a secondary or used market that ends up competing with the primary market. For example, car manufacturers need to balance sales to consumers, rental car companies, and determine an optimal balance between leases and sale; on the consumer side, we can choose whether to buy or lease a new car or a slightly used car. This line of research leads directly to the challenges and innovations in the economy today. The central idea is that consumers do not need to “own” many of the products that they use. For example, if cars are available on demand, then you do not need to own a car, because you can get a ride when you need it. We can make a similar case for office space, cell phones, lawnmowers, and so on. The interesting research problem is to understand who will “own” these products and how these changes will affect the prices and quantities of goods.

Throughout his time at Duke, Debu has shifted into leadership roles, including Chair of the University Priorities Committee. That led to serving on the Resources Committee of the Board of Trustees enabling him to connect with others around the university.

“Those experiences gave me a broad perspective, which was valuable,” Debu said. “It got me out of my narrow view of the world from a business school’s perspective. It also helped me get more engaged with the rest of campus, and I have enjoyed that a lot. I missed talking with history professors, and this gave me that opportunity.”

In reflecting about his journey and talking to Muskingum’s 2023 graduates, Debu shared one of his favorite quotes from a John Lennon song: “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”

“I never could plan everything. I knew what I needed to do to finish college. I knew what I needed to do to get a job, but there was so much uncertainty,” Debu said. “The one constant is to keep trying and stumble your way through the process.”

Students must be flexible. On average, they will be changing careers multiple times over their lives. According to Debu, we have plans, and the universe has other ideas, so we need to be flexible and willing to change. “Fortune favors the prepared mind,” Debu said. “Prepare your mind, and not just academically. Take care of yourself physically and mentally. Your mind has to keep learning and absorbing.

“As humans we get habituated to situations; we want an orderly pattern. We want the world to make sense,” Debu said. “We aren’t good at understanding the role of context and chance. Get out of your comfort zone and take a chance. It was a big risk moving to another country forcing me to get out of my comfort zone. I took the chance, and it put me on a new path.”