| Big Ethics on a
Small Scale EVEN WHILE
OVERSEEING THE creation
of baguettes, pastries and croissants, small-business owner Kristi
Shepherd Drake ’83 keeps good business practices in
mind. After graduating from Seattle Pacific University with a degree
in food science and nutrition, Drake transformed a temporary job
into co-ownership of one of Seattle’s most popular
bakeries: Le Panier in Pike Place Market.
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Before buying the bakery with Thierry Mougin, a longtime Le Panier
baker, Drake and Mougin discussed their business philosophy. “We
wanted to show respect to each other and our employees, show appreciation
to customers and demand quality,” recalls Drake.
When the Enron
and WorldCom scandals first broke, Drake and Mougin reevaluated
how they had been running their 28-employee company for nearly
10 years. “We were pleased,” says Drake, describing how they apply
their business ethics in specific ways every day: The products
are baked daily with fresh ingredients; they are vigilant about
the shop’s cleanliness; and since theirs is a cash business, they
require strict honesty from themselves and employees when handling
money.
Because Le Panier is an authentic French bakery, several
staff members are non-U.S. citizens. Over the years, some foreign
nationals have asked Drake and Mougin to bend the rules, either
by paying them under the table or by overlooking missing work documents. “We
don’t do that,” Drake says. “The laws are there, and we respect
them.”
A few years ago, a young Frenchwoman applied for a job but
lacked the proper paperwork. In an effort to help her, Drake discovered
the woman was eligible for an 18-month internship through the Maryland-based
Association for International Practical Training (AIPT). Finding
and developing the AIPT internship took a year, says Drake, but
the woman gained the work experience she needed. “Through the process,
our staff was watching a business with integrity.”
The Pike Place
community also watches — and benefits from — Le Panier’s integrity.
Every night, the bakery donates leftover breads and pastries to
a local senior center. Seattle-based food bank Northwest Harvest
likewise receives authentic French baked goods.
In short, Drake
considers her bakery a witness to customers, to employees and to
the community. “To shoulder this alone would be impossible,” she
admits. “With daily strength from God, I can make sound decisions,
be consistent with all our employees, work through to a resolution
with Thierry or an employee, and have the determination to produce
wonderful products for all our customers - every day.”
— BY HOPE MCPHERSON
— PHOTO BY MIKE SIEGEL
When Bad Things Happen to Good Businesses
IN THE EARLY MORNING HOURS of December 14, 2002,
David McIntyre ’85 came face to face with every CEO’s
worst nightmare.
McIntyre is the president and CEO of TriWest Healthcare Alliance,
one of the nation’s largest government contractors and a provider
of health care for military personnel and their families.
He says
he’ll never forget the phone call informing him that the company’s
Phoenix, Arizona, headquarters had been burglarized and that an
entire database of customer information had been stolen.
Phone
numbers, social security numbers and addresses of the company’s
1.1 million customers, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff, were now in dangerous hands, and McIntyre says he feared
the worst. “With such sensitive information in the wrong hands,” he
says, “there could be an attempt to blackmail the U.S. government
with respect to the pending military conflict.”
But McIntyre had
an even bigger fear: “Identity theft is the fastest-rising crime
in our nation,” he explains. “I was worried that our customers
were in danger of having their financial lives ruined if this information
was misused, and I assumed this was the likely reason for the theft.”
After
consulting with experts, he learned this was the single largest
case of information theft in U.S. history. McIntyre had two choices:
attempt to preserve his and his company’s reputations by keeping
the situation a secret, or go public. He chose the latter.
“This
is really embarrassing,” McIntyre recalls saying to The
New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, “but I need your help to get
the word out so we can help these people.” Within a few days, the
story appeared on nearly every major television network and resulted
in massive print coverage.
“Some people might have thought this
was career suicide, and our competitors probably thought we’d lose
the $10 billion contract for which we were competing, but we had
a higher-level responsibility to our customers,” he says. “I couldn’t
live with myself if I compromised my customers’ futures to protect
my or my company’s reputations.”
In the end, government leaders
and the company’s board of directors stood behind McIntyre. “To
this day, not one of our customers has suffered a stolen identity,” he
says. “We protected our customers; and in August we won the contract
to serve 2.7 million people across 21 states.”
McIntyre says the
last thing he wants is a pat on the back. “While sometimes painful
or embarrassing, doing the right thing is not an extraordinary
or complicated act. It is biblically, morally and ethically grounded — and
the results are exceptionally gratifying.”
— BY SARAH JIO
— PHOTO BY MIKE SIEGEL
Taking the Community to Heart
TRYING TO CONNECT THE dots of Bruce Brooks’ career
is a little dizzying. After all, the executive vice president of
the Federal Home
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Loan Bank of Seattle was Microsoft’s director
of community affairs just last year, and before that he was deputy
mayor of the city of Seattle, a lawyer in private practice and
a public affairs consultant. But there’s a common denominator in
Brooks’ professional journey: a heart for community engagement.
Since joining the Federal Home Loan Bank — a venture headed by
former Seattle Mayor Norman B. Rice — in 2003, Brooks says he’s
more in tune with the needs of the community than ever. Though
a for-profit entity, the bank is also a government-sponsored enterprise
that makes annual contributions, through its more than 370 member
financial institutions, of more than $17 million to fund affordable
housing in a bank district that stretches from Guam and Hawaii
to the western United States. A portion of this money comes in
the form of grants to potential homeowners who are 80 percent or
more below the median income level.
To someone who is as passionate
about affordable housing as Brooks, this is business at its best. “The
bank’s Home$tart Program makes a tremendous difference for the
person who is going from being a renter to a homeowner,” he says. “They’re
able to get into a home and nurture and grow their families.”
In
addition, large grants — sometimes in excess of a million dollars — fund
a wide range of affordable housing projects. The Seattle Bank,
in partnership with other organizations, recently provided funding
for the renovation of public housing in Seattle’s Holly Park neighborhood — a
World War II-vintage development that had fallen into disrepair. “I
think it’s undoubtedly an even more vibrant and successful community
now,” says Brooks.
But good works are not an excuse for less-exacting
standards, says Brooks. “When you’re doing things that you think
are ‘good for the community,’ you could be inclined to be less
vigilant about issues around performance and outcomes,” he explains. “We
don’t lose sight of these things, and especially we don’t lose
sight of why we’re doing this and who really benefits.”
Brooks
challenges businesspeople to think more broadly than monetary contributions. “We
should never forget to ask ourselves,” he says, “‘What are the
skills and other positive contributions that I, as a business person,
can bring to the communities in which I work and live?’”
— BY SARAH JIO
— PHOTO BY MIKE SIEGEL
Lobbying for Good
Policy — and
Good Business
THINK LOBBYIST AND WHAT characteristics come to mind?
For Jill Nicholson Mackie ’79, the answers are honesty and integrity.
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And those are precisely the qualities that she brings to her high-profile
job as The Seattle Times’ first external affairs director, a position
she has held since 1999.
“I like what I do because it’s challenging
mentally, and I work for the success of one of the few remaining
independent, family-owned newspapers in the country,” Mackie says. “I
don’t think I could take a job where the issues I lobbied for or
against were inconsistent with my values or were against what I would
consider to be good policy.”
Good policy, she notes, benefits more
than a lobbyist’s employer. Issues she’s been involved with include
repeal of the federal estate tax “because of its impact on family-owned
businesses,” as well as limits on media ownership. “Our publisher
feels strongly that the FCC’s current direction would lead to even
more consolidation of the media, which is already alarming,” she
explains. “The effect is that only a few large corporations may ultimately
own the vast majority of news outlets. Not many Americans feel comfortable
having a few corporations control their access to news.”
As a newcomer
thrust into the complex matrix of business and government in the
1980s, Mackie maintained her equilibrium. “I’ve always been non-partisan,
and viewing elected officials as public servants is a concept that
has served me well,” she says. “Many people in my line of work expect
elected officials to cater primarily to the special interests that
provided the funding to elect them. I approach people in elected
office as though they are what they say they are when running for
election: people committed to the broader good of the citizens.”
Guided
by her Christian faith, Mackie finds a balance between hopeless naiveté and
hardened cynicism. “In this kind of work, people sometimes betray
you or are dishonest,” she says. “It’s easy to become angry, even
bitter, or to be tempted to use similar tactics to achieve my outcome.
Over the years, I’ve learned to step back and ask God to help me
forgive a person and give up my anger. While achievements are important
in business, they should not be accomplished at the expense of honesty,
integrity and a forgiving heart. I know that God is more interested
in what’s in my heart than in any one immediate success for an employer.”
— BY CONNIE MCDOUGALL
— PHOTO BY MIKE SIEGEL
Business With
a Purpose
“I WAS SITTING ON AN AIRPLANE to Singapore 10
years ago, tearfully wondering what I was doing,” says Barry Rowan,
chief financial officer and treasurer of Nextel Partners Inc.,
one of the nation’s largest telecommunications companies.
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“I couldn’t
make the connection between my purpose in life and my purpose in
business.”
Since then, the Seattle Pacific University trustee says
his life mission has been to find that connection. “I struggled
deeply with the idea of purpose,” he says. “But God showed me how
I was looking at work in the wrong way. The fundamental problem
was that I was seeking to derive meaning from my work, rather than
bring meaning to it.”
On that flight, Rowan says he thought about
the ways people approach their work. “Hospice workers, for example,
could have the perspective that their job of changing bedpans is
meaningless,” he says. “But they could also see their occupation
as providing an environment of unconditional love for people in
their last precious days of life. I began to realize that it’s
the perspective we bring to our work that can change things so
radically. We are not defined by what we do, but what we do is
an expression of who we are.”
For someone who has spent the majority
of his career as a CEO and CFO of sizable corporations, Rowan knows
what it takes to be successful. He’s held leadership roles in growing
companies from fledgling operations to multibillion- dollar enterprises,
and in his current role at Nextel, he recently completed $850 million
in financings, including a successful $375 million public offering.
These things are important, says Rowan, but something else is central
to his life mission: “Ethical or unethical behavior ultimately
emanates from the hearts of people. That’s why I think we should
focus on the condition of the heart — beginning with my own.”
Rowan
is the first to admit this might seem an odd statement from the
CFO of a major company. “I’m not saying that money doesn’t matter,” he
explains. “Money is important and necessary, but money is only
fuel to achieve higher purposes.”
Pressures for performance are
real, admits Rowan, particularly for public companies. “But my
faith causes me to take an eternal perspective of my work. God
cares about what I’m doing right here, right now,” he says.
When
all is said and done, Rowan has one guiding principle: “I want
to be able to look God in the eye and say, ‘I strived to live for
your purposes, focused on doing the right thing in the moments
of this life you gave me.’”
— BY SARAH JIO
— PHOTO BY MIKE SIEGEL
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