THE MANAGEMENT LEARNING CURVE
Devin Wenig ’88 admits to not doing much but is nonetheless busy all the time. Reuters, the well-known international news and financial information provider, announced in May that after the completion of a $35 billion merger with the Thomson Corporation Wenig would be promoted from chief operating officer to chief executive officer. Wenig’s rise as a top executive at Reuters has made evident an elemental truth of management.
“What you learn is that the priority moves from you getting things done yourself to being able to enable great teams to get things done. The scale of the tasks gets such that you cannot do things yourself,” Wenig said. “In fact, you get paid to set a strategy, to set priorities and to create great teams.
Wenig joined Reuters in 1993 as a corporate lawyer after a short stint at the high-profile New York City law firm of Cravath, Swaine & Moore. Wenig held a number of senior management positions before being appointed president of Reuters Information in January 2001 and by 2003 was named president of the Reuters Business Divisions. Reuters, best known as a news service, was founded in 1861 and has expanded services in the Internet era and now employs about 16,800 people in 89 countries. On the news side, Reuters employs 2,400 journalists, photographers and camera operators based in bureaus around the globe. The company also manages a constantly updated financial information network that monitors millions of stocks, bonds, currency and other financial instruments. The Reuters Group reported $5.2 billion in revenue in 2006.
The leadership skills and creative thinking that Wenig employs are partially rooted in his term in the early 1990s as CEO of a pharmaceutical company, Nastech Pharmaceutical, which was founded in 1983 by his father, Jeffrey Wenig, a Ph.D. and scientist. In 1991, his father died unexpectedly of a heart attack at age 54, leaving the younger Wenig, then a 22-year-old recent Columbia Law School graduate, to take over. Under his leadership, the company restructured its finances, and marketed a number of products that boosted revenue and stabilized the company. Today Nastech is based in Bothell, Wash., employs 140 people and has a market capitalization of approximately $350 million dollars.
“You learn courage, in a professional sense. Very little can scare you after you go through something like that,” Wenig said of his time at Nastech. “You also learn how capable people are. And how important it is to forge bonds and teams. It was a big growth experience but not one that I would wish on anybody else.”
That courage may prove valuable during the planned merger of the Canadian publishing company, Thomson Corp. and Reuters. The merger’s goal is to form one of the world’s leading news and financial information providers.
“Reuters sits at the middle of media, financial services and the Internet. That makes it complicated and confusing but its also what makes it fun,” Wenig said.
At Reuters, Wenig has helped usher in a group of about 30 Union graduates into company internships. He speaks with each group of young people and shares advice on navigating the early stages of a career. Wenig was a political science major at Union and took classes in a variety of academic disciplines. As an upperclassman, Wenig won the Samuel M. Hesson Prize for a student of high promise and character interested in a law career.
“Students are sometimes very worried about: ‘What job should I have? What school should I go to? Exactly how do I map out my whole career?’ No one I know has been able to map out their whole career. I sure haven’t. I never would have dreamed that I’d be here when I was sitting in Schenectady all those years ago,” Wenig said.
Wenig’s advice for young professionals is simple: experiment. Meet different people, experience different cultures and try to find your passion, Wenig said. Graduates should be prepared for a professional world made more intimately connected by new information technology.
For Wenig, former Union Professor Joe Board provided worldly guidance.
“I thought he was a great guy. He was worldly and he was articulate and I know there are a lot of alumni that feel that Joe made a positive impact on them,” Wenig said. “Joe would often say, ‘The way you learn and grow is witnessing other people behaving in a professional context.’”
A SCHOLAR AND ACTIVIST
Maureen Hsia graduated a year early, but Union won’t soon forget her.
Hsia, a history major and political science minor from Shanghai, was back home in the People’s Republic of China helping prepare for the Special Olympics World Summer Games when her name was announced at Commencement. Despite her absence she created the annual Maureen Hsia ’07 Prize for Excellence in Middle Eastern Studies, set to begin in 2008.
Hsia’s unusual step of creating a senior gift before she’s officially an alumna embodies her passion for Middle Eastern culture while underscoring her appreciation for Union’s small, personal liberal arts community.
Hsia, 21, is the daughter of Eric Li-Chyun Hsia and Dah-Wei Hsia. She pinpoints her interest in Middle Eastern history to her high school reading of The Chosen, Chaim Potok’s novel about the friendship between two Jewish teens from different worlds set against the backdrop of World War II and the Holocaust.
That spurred her to study Israel-U.S. relations, “and from there my interest grew, to the entire Middle East.” She created her own concentration in Middle Eastern history and, working with Professor Stephen Berk, did her senior thesis on the history of Judeo-Persian relations.
Hsia traveled to Turkey and Israel this winter for research and subsequently exhibited her photos of people and marketplaces in the exhibit, “Wandering the Souk,” at the Nott Memorial. More than the beauty of those two countries, she said in her artist’s statement, “I hope to share some insight on my perception of social and cultural realities in the Middle East.”
This fall Hsia will have an opportunity to expand those insights when she travels throughout the Mideast.
“My goal is to learn Arabic and immerse myself in the culture,” she said. “There’s so much going on there that needs to be fixed. Finding a solution is something I want to do. I’m ready to go out into the world and do extraordinary things.”
Hsia missed Commencement to work at the 2007 Special Olympics World Summer Games in Shanghai as they prepare for their October opening. Some 7,500 athletes will compete in 25 different sports, from aquatics to volleyball.
A graduate of the American Shanghai School and member of the Union Scholars Program, Hsia said leaving a metropolis of more than 20 million people for a city of 61,000 “was a shock at first, but it was good. I really like Schenectady, especially with the new developments changing State Street and events like Art Night. I love Proctors and I like the Schenectady Public Library a lot; it has such a great movie collection.”
She has been on Dean’s List each of her three years and is a member of Phi Alpha Theta, the history honor society. She served as captain of the ultimate Frisbee team, co-chaired the Student Alumni Association, tutored at the Writing Center and was a member of the Ballroom Dancing Club. She worked at the Rathskeller, was an orientation advisor and volunteered at Habitat for Humanity.
As Breazzano House Council chair, student representative and a house resident for two years, Hsia worked closely with Professor Byron Nichols, a mentor. Last year, she served as house representative to the presidential inauguration of Stephen C. Ainlay.