Ex-CEOs launch CEO Academy in KC to cultivate next generation of leaders | Preview

By Leslie Collins – Specials editor, Kansas City Business Journal
Aug 19, 2024

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Retired CEOs Bill Zollars and Dan Hesse talked fondly about the business community support they received when they moved to Kansas City years ago.

In 2005, Hesse had only been in town a week when David Lockton of Lockton Cos. invited him to a dinner party at his house with other local CEOs. A few weeks later, JE Dunn Construction’s then-CEO Terry Dunn invited Hesse to dinner with another group of local executives.

“It was, ‘Welcome to Kansas City, and you’re part of our community,’” former Sprint Corp. CEO Hesse said. “I got so much value from that as a new CEO in town.”

But through the years, that tight support network that existed for rising leaders has experienced an “obvious decline,” said Zollars, former CEO of YRC Worldwide Inc. He credits part of the reason to companies being acquired, going out of business or moving out of town.

“But the fact is, we’ve still got a lot of really good talent in Kansas City,” Zollars said.

He wants to cultivate that talent, building the next generation of strong CEOs. That desire sparked the idea for CEO Academy of Kansas City, an educational program led by retired CEOs that’s tailored for aspiring, new and developing CEOs. The “faculty” includes 9 local powerhouse executives: retired CEOs Hesse, Zollars, Beryl Raff (Helzberg Diamonds), Dave Dillon (The Kroger Co.), Greg Graves (Burns & McDonnell), Brent Shafer and David Feinberg (Cerner Corp.), and Brent Stewart (United Way of Greater Kansas City), along with Mark Donovan, current president of the Kansas City Chiefs.

The program kicks off Oct. 17 with a two-day event in Kansas City at the Henry W. Bloch School of Management, which is providing administrative support. Registration and an application is required.

The event includes speakers and panel discussions covering topics such as owning the strategy, how to become a CEO, personal characteristics of the most successful CEOs, succession planning, and transforming the board into an asset.

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The Complexities of our Digitally Connected World

Reposted from Dan Hesse's LinkedIn series on Executive Leadership and Corporate Responsibility. The following was published August 16, 2015. 

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Today’s New York Times front page story on AT&T highlights one of the many dilemmas raised in a speech I delivered in March titled “Is a Digitally Connected World a Better Place?” The speech was one of two keynotes from the New York Global Leaders Forum annual gala; the second delivered by NSA Chief Admiral Mike Rogers in which he discussed cyber security.

In my address, I posed a question to the audience:

“Which CEO is more patriotic, the one who provides all of the information the government requests to help catch a criminal or prevent a terrorist attack, or the CEO whose company creates tools that make it difficult for law enforcement or the government to acquire a customer’s information, believing protecting civil liberties is a higher calling?”

It’s a very tough question.

The talk explores the plusses and minuses from our digitally connected world in areas such as education, the news, the environment, economies, health care, music, safety, aging, privacy and national security. Creating a “Goldilocks Solution” (getting it “just right”) will require open, thoughtful debate, dialogue, and compromise, which the American political system could use more of in many areas.