Raymond Gilmartin ’63 has a few prescriptions for achieving success.
“First, choose things that you are excited about,” the former chairman, president and CEO of Merck & Co. told about three dozen people, mostly students, over lunch in Hale House Tuesday. “Be sure you are in a setting where you like the people you are with. Learn something and continue to grow and develop. Seek to make a contribution, strive to make a difference. And finally, treat people around you with dignity and respect.”
Gilmartin has leaned on those principles since his days at Union, where he excelled academically as an electrical engineering student and athletically in football, wrestling and lacrosse.
“Union made a big difference in my life,” said Gilmartin, a Long Island native who chose the College because of its small size and commitment to liberal arts and engineering. “I was able to do things here I would not have been able to do in a larger setting.”
After graduating from Union, Gilmartin got his M.B.A. from Harvard. He worked as a development engineer at Eastman Kodak, management consultant at Arthur D. Little and CEO of Becton Dickinson & Co. In 1994, he became the first outsider in 100 years to run Merck, where he was hailed by The Economist as “a role model for the new breed of socially concerned, non-celebrity executives” for his philanthropic work and for being a business leader with a social conscience.
Gilmartin stepped down from Merck in May 2005. Since 2006, he has taught at Harvard Business School. He told the group it may not be his last stop.
“Live your life with sense of potential,” is what he and his wife, Gladys, always remind each other. “No matter what you are doing or how good you feel about it, it’s not the last thing you are going to do.”
During his visit, Gilmartin met with President Stephen C. Ainlay and toured his old campus. At the end of the day, he proudly put on a Union cap presented to him at the luncheon.
“This was the right place for me,” he said.