Marc N. Casper: Thermo Fisher Scientific President & CEO

Marc N. Casper earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from Wesleyan University. Marc obtained an MBA with high distinction from Harvard Business School. He began his career as a strategist at Bain & Company and later moved to Bain Capital. 

Marc was President-Americas for clinical diagnostics provider Dade Behring, Inc. He later became President, Chief Executive Officer and director of Kendro Laboratory Products. He then joined Thermo Fisher Scientific in 2001 as President of the Life Sciences sector of Thermo Electron. 

In 2003, he was named Senior Vice President, and in 2005 was given responsibility for all of the company’s operating divisions. After the merging creating Thermo Fisher Scientific in 2006, he was named President of Analytic Technologies. Marc was named Chief Operating Officer in 2008.  In October 2009, March became President and Chief Executive Officer of Thermo Fisher Scientific. 

Thermo Fisher Scientific, Inc. (NYSE:TMO) is the world leader in servicing science, with revenues of $17 billion and approximately 50,000 employees in 50 countries. The company helps customers accelerate life sciences research, solve complex analytical challenges, improve patient diagnostics and increase laboratory productivity. 

Louis D’Ambrosio: Moving On

There are people who just seemed destined for the big-time. They are at the top at what they do. These kinds of talents get recognized and many doors are opened for which other will not have the opportunity to pass through.

This can be said of Louis D’Ambrosio. His academic credentials put him in the exclusive lane of career high fliers. Louis earned his MBA from Harvard Business School and a Bachelor of Science from Pennsylvania State University, Summa cum laude and Valedictorian.

After college he joined IBM and worked there for 16 years. He left IBM in August 2002, by that time Louis was responsible for worldwide sales and marketing for the company’s $12 billion software group. Having reached this high level of work responsibility and experience it was only natural that he would be dealing with companies will multi-billion dollar sales.

Louis next became involved with business communications company Avaya. He was head of Avaya’s $2 billion Global Services business unit composed of 7,000 professionals across the full life-cycle of services, including network consulting, integration, maintenance and managed services. Louis then became President of Global Sales and Marketing.  He finally got the top positions of President and CEO of Avaya in July 2006.

While this would have been a life-time goal or achievement for some; as for Louis he moved on and joined Sears Holdings in February in 2011 as CEO.  This firm operates 2,600 stores in the U.S. and Canada with its Sears and Kmart chains.

This was a challenging job as Sears Holdings was for years experiencing declining sales. As mentioned by the Chairman of Sears, Louis helped Sears become a more customer-focused company. Sales though did not improve and in fact continued to decline. Share price of the company was beginning to rise despite losses.  Due to health issues involving his family Louis decided to step down in February 2012.

It was a short stint at Sears but he had now moved on and it was publicly announced on August 19, 2013 that he will assume the role of Chairman of the Board of Sensus “a leading provider of clean-technology solutions” based in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Richard Goyder: Leading An Australian Conglomerate

With a Bachelor of Commerce degree from the University of Western Australia, Richard Goyder set of in the corporate world. Perhaps even he didn’t know after graduating that one day he would lead a very huge company. Aside from his undergraduate degree Richard would also complete the Advanced Management Program at the Harvard Business School in 1998.

After working in various commercial roles at Tubemakers of Australia Limited, Richard joined Wesfarmers in 1993. He assumed the role of a number of commercial positions in Westfarmers’ Business Development Department including General Manager.

Richard was appointed Managing Director of Westfarmers Dalgety Limited, this became Westfarmers Landmark Limited, a position he retained until he was appointed as Finance Director of Westfarmers Limited in 2002. He was promoted to Deputy Managing Director and Chief Financial Officer of Westfarmers Limited in 2004. The following year in July 2005 he became Managing Director and CEO.

Richard now leads a company that is one of the oldest in Australia and one of the most successfully diversified. The company began in June 1914 as the Western Farmers Cooperative and was mostly involved in the provision of services and merchandise to Western Australia’s rural community. Today the company that now does business in supermarkets, energy, chemicals, real estate, and other ventures is the largest employer in Australia with more than 200,000 employees and over 450,000 shareholders.

Vittorio Calao: The Second Time Around

It may be the case that the position you think will go to you goes to someone else. It could be that the position wasn’t meant for you or it simply wasn’t the time yet. The latter was the case with Vittorio Calao.

Calao was born on October 3, 1961 in Brescia, Italy.  He graduated from Bocconi University with a degree in Business. Highly intelligent Calao earned, with Honors, an MBA from Harvard Business School.

He began his career in London working as an investment banker at Morgan Stanley. In 1986 he was back in Italy as a Partner in the Milan office of McKinsey & Co. His work covered telecommunications, media and industrial goods. Calao was also responsible for office recruitment.

Around a decade later Calao joined Omnitel Pronto Italia and reached the position of Chief Operating Officer before it was taken over and became Vodafone Italy. When you’re good at what you do even the new owners will notice. Calao didn’t have to worry about his employment status. By 2001 he was the Regional CEO for Southern Europe and the following year even joined the main board of Vodafone Group.

Calao was a rising star at Vodafone and was in line for the top post. As things turned out the CEO position became open but it went to someone else. Calao resigned from Vodafone and joined RSC MediaGroup, an Italian publishing company, where he was appointed CEO in July 2004.

Things did not go very well at RCS MediaGroup. There was criticism from shareholders concerning the group’s governance and strategy.  Calao resigned from the company and rejoined Vodafone in 2006 as CEO, Europe and Deputy Chief Executive. 

He finally got the CEO post in July 2008 succeeding the man who got the job instead of him. His resignation at RCS MediaGroup was actually a blessing in disguise as it gave him another crack at the top post at Vodafone. A winner never quits.  

Managing A Trillion Dollar Business

There are not many people in this planet who manage multi-billion dollars businesses. Fewer still are those who handle trillion dollar companies. One of the few who does is Mary Callahan Erdoes. She is the CEO of J.P. Morgan Asset Management.

This enterprise oversees around $1.3 trillion in assets. Mary is head of the fifth largest asset management company in the world. This also includes the second largest hedge funds as well as America’s most prominent private bank that caters to the ultrawealthy as well as more than 200 other investment classes.  She made her mark early; on her fist year on the job revenue reached $9 billion and profits rose 20% to $1.7 billion.

Mary is known for her hard work and competitiveness. She works in an industry known for its toughness and she has come out with good deals for her company. Among the positions she handled was heading private bank where client base increase 15% a year and assets growing by $238 billion. This got the notice of the top brass who asked her to head the asset management division.

Mary finished her bachelor’s degree at Georgetown University, majoring in Mathematics and was the only female to complete as a Math major at Georgetown at that time. She then went to obtain an MBA degree at Harvard Business School.

Mary worked for other financial companies before she joined J.P. Morgan Asset Management as head of fixed income for high-net-worth individuals, foundations and endowments.  Less than 10 years later she became CEO of J.P. Morgan Private Bank.  In 2009 she was appointed CEO of the Asset Management division.

Aside from heading a trillion dollar business Mary is raising 3 kids with her husband.

Running A Multi-billion Dollar Company

Some individuals work for so long and don’t make it to the top. We are not saying that they are failures. Just having a job means you’re not a failure already. There are just those special breed of individuals who make it to the top and stay there performing their jobs well.

This is the case with H. Laurence Culp, Jr. the president and CEO of Danaher Corporation. He graduated with a B.A. from Washington College in 1985 and later earned his MBA at Harvard Business School. Culp first worked at Accenture which was previously known as Andersen Consulting.

Then he joined Danaher Corporation in 1990 through Veeder-Root a Danaher subsidiary.  Three years later he became the president of this subsidiary.  Culp was then promoted as a group executive and corporate officer in 1995. His responsibilities included heading the corporation’s Environmental and Testing Measurement businesses.

It was all uphill after that. In 1999 Culp was promoted as executive vice president and the following year he became the COO. Then the following year again in 2001 he was appointed president and CEO of Danaher and holds these positions till now.

Danaher is a Fortune 200 publicly listed company that designs, manufactures and markets products and services to professional , medical, and commercial customers. It does business in 125 countries and had revenues of $16.1 billion 2011.

Culp has held his position for over 10 years now. Under his watch the company’s revenue and market capitalization increased four times to more than $16 billion and $35 billion respectively.  With this kind of performance it looks like he’ll be at the top post for some time to come.