Castulo de la Rocha’s Community-focused Health Care Leadership Activities

With a career in health care and law spanning nearly three decades, Castulo de la Rocha leads AltaMed Health Services Corporation as President and CEO. He is committed to providing an urban Latino population with accessible and affordable medical and human services. A dynamic community presence, AltaMed has expanded from two employees in the early 1970s to more than 1,600 employees today, spanning 44 senior care service and health care clinics. More than 500,000 patients visit facilities of the fully-accredited Federally Qualified Health Center on an annual basis.

A longtime proponent of social justice, Mr. de la Rocha is fundamentally committed to the notion that proper health care is a right, not a privilege. Reflecting legal advocacy experience on behalf of immigrant populations, he has overseen AltaMed’s expansion into accessible storefronts and community housing development locations over the years. The full range of services offered at AltaMed clinics includes dentistry, ophthalmology care, women’s and children’s health, and HIV treatment and prevention.

Selected as one of Hispanic Business Magazine’s top 100 Latino influentials of 2008, Castulo de la Rocha maintains a strong leadership presence within his professional community. A Senior Fellow of the University of California, Los Angeles’ School of Public Affairs, he has held board responsibilities with Blue Shield of California, and the Los Angeles Orthopaedic Hospital Foundation. Mr. de la Rocha has also guided the development of premier fundraising events such as East LA Meets Napa. This one-of-a-kind event pairs wine produced by Latino Napa vintners with high-caliber Mexican restaurants throughout East Los Angeles.

Challenging Times For Olaf Koch

Olaf Koch is CEO and Chairman of the Management Board of METRO AG. This company is considered to be the fifth-largest retailer in the world by revenue; it’s behind Wal-Mart, Carrefour, Tesco and Kroger. It is one of the big boys in the retail and wholesale business. The group is based in Düsseldorf, Germany and has the largest market share in that country. METRO AG is of the most internationalized wholesale and retail corporations.

Koch is thus heading a very large publicly traded company and interestingly his early career path had nothing to do with store retailing. Born on June 1, 1970 in Bad Soden am Taunus, he is a graduate of business management from the University of Cooperative Education Stuttgart. 

Koch’s career had basically been in the auto industry.  Starting in 1994 he was Manager for Finance Processing and Systems at Daimler Benz AG. In January 1996 he founded and was the CEO of IT-Networks GmbH until July 1998. Then it was back with DaimlerChrysler AG where he was Senior Manager at the Corporate War Room from July 1998 to November 1999. Koch went on to hold other higher positions including Vice President, Corporate e-Business and Member of the Board of Management Mercedes Car Group responsible for Finance, Controlling and Strategy.

He left DaimlerChrysler AG in August 2007 and then joined private equity group Permira Beteiligungsberatung GmbH as Managing Director of Operations from October 2007 to September 2009. Then the auto industry executive with strengths in IT and finance joined retail giant METRO AG in September 2009 as Member of the Management Board and CFO.

Since becoming CEO Koch has vowed to change the top-down corporate culture at METRO. He wants more open, bold and controversial discussions taking place. This hasn’t been easy given the recent performance of the company which showed profits dropping. Heads of top ranking executive have rolled with five having been asked to leave.

Experts say Koch’ senior team now does not have long experience on retail. He is continuing to stream line and centralize operations to cut cost and grow the company.  These are challenging times for Koch. Given that he came from a different background perhaps the company’s board did really want change. As for Koch he knows very well that he wasn’t given the top post just so he could enjoy smelling the flowers.

Paul Bulcke: Nestlé’s Top Gun

Paul Bulcke was born in 1954 and is a Belgian national. After college he worked as a financial analyst for Scott Graphics International for two years. Then he joined food giant Nestle in 1979 as a marketing trainee at their head office in Vevey, Switzerland.

Paul has never worked for any other company since then. His job at Nestle has taken him to live in seven countries and learn six languages. He has lived in Switzerland, Spain, Belgium, Peru, Ecuador, and Chile and has headed operations in Europe rising in various positions along the way. A big promoting came in 2004 when he was appointed executive vice-president of the Americas.  He was in charge of not just the US. but also Canada, Latin America and the Caribbean.  

He performed exceptionally well and was appointed CEO on September 2007 and officially started in his new role in 2008. Paul became CEO at the time when there was a global financial crisis and has led with a steady hand managing to increase the company’s year on year profit. 

His main preoccupation is the large role Nestlé can play in people’s nutrition. He is dead serious on this and it’s not some sort of marketing gimmick. With its global presence and strong R&D he believes Nestlé  can contribute significantly to people in different groups from senior citizens to children in providing them with the right nutrition.

Shamsul Azhar Abbas: Reforms At Petronas

Petronas is the national oil company of Malaysia. It was incorporated on August 17, 1974 and vested with the entire ownership and control of the petroleum resource of Malaysia. Given the resource available at hand along with managerial talent it has become a fully integrated oil and gas corporation and is one of the largest companies in the whole planet being part of the Fortune Global 500.

Having a monopoly on the country’s petroleum and gas resource gives it a huge advantage but it comes at a price. Since it’s government owned it cannot at all times be run like a commercial company. Part of its revenues must also go to the government.

Tan Sri Shamsul Azhar Abbas is the president and CEO of Petronas. Not only does he have to deal with global market forces but also with the country’s various political interests. Like his predecessor he has pushed for reforms in the company he has worked for since 1975.

It involves a lot of negotiating since the chief executive of Petronas and its board serves at the pleasure of the prime minister. It has been noted that over the years the government has let the oil firm fund its dream projects and bail out its mistakes.  Abbas has forged on to improve the company’s commercial performance while at the same time negotiating for a cut in the annual subsidy it pays the government. The company funds 40 percent of the national budget.  

Abbas does acknowledge the support of the current Prime Minister, Datuk Seir Najib Razak allowing him to make necessary reforms. Abbas has spent over 35 years with Petronas starting out as an executive trainee in 1975. He rose through the ranks serving in various positions and capacities and became the president and CEO in February 2010.

Abbas has a degree in Political Science from the Science University of Malaysia, MS in Energy Management from the University of Pennsylvania, USA and a Technical Diploma in Petroleum Economics from Institute Francaise de Petrole (IFP), France.

Kazuhiro Tsuga: Taking On A Tough Challenge

Heading one of the largest companies in the world is a dream come true for any executive. It has its big responsibilities and challenges. Few executives though have as tough a challenge now being faced by Kazuhiro Tsuga, President of Panasonic Corporation. He became president of the company in June 2012 and is also its Principal Executive Officer.

Tsuga replaced the previous president amid the staggering $14.1 billion the company has lost since April 2011. The losses are not unique to Panasonic as other large Japanese electronics companies have also experienced tremendous losses due to a host of factors like the devastating earthquake and tsunami. Innovative and efficient competitors from Korea and China have also eaten into their market.  Even the American company Apple has come roaring back with new products that have taken market share.

Panasonic through its more than 95 years of existence has become a sprawling electronics juggernaut producing a wide range of products from TV sets right down to eyelash curlers. The business model is no longer working.

Some of the products along with jobs will have to be cut out. Tsuga has been chosen to lead the company through this very tough and painful period.  With his more than 30 years of company experience he knows a lot about Panasonic which will be put into good use as he tries to stem the continuing losses while coming out with products that will bring the company to a profitable future.

Mario Greco: Insurance Man Inside Out

There are many top executives who got into their career in unexpected ways. For Mario Greco his whole career has basically been focused in the insurance industry. It is not such a bad industry to be in considering some of the largest companies in the world are in the insurance sector.

Greco comes from Italy having been born in Naples in June 16, 1959. He earned his economics degree at the University of Rome in 1983. Greco had an advantage as far as a varied academic education is concerned. Aside from his European education he went to the U.S. which has a slightly different approach. There he earned a masters degree in International Economics and Monetary Theory at Rochester University, New York in 1986.

The same year he graduated Greco joined McKinsey & Company. At McKinsey he was a Partner Leader in the insurance segment and was with the company from 1986 to 1994. It has pretty been much in the insurance sector from then on. He joined RAS (Allianz Group) (Riunione Adriatica) as Head of Claims Division in 1995. By the following year Greco was promoted to General Manager in charge of Insurance business. He became the Managing Director in 1998.

Greco was already a rising star having been named Insurance CEO of the year in 2004. He became the CEO of EurizonVita, which is a company in the Sanpaolo IMI Group in 2005. He then was appointed CEO of Eurizon Financial Group.

Looking for other opportunities Greco joined Zurich Financial Services in 2007 as Deputy CEO Global Life. By the following year he became CEO and member of the Executive Committee. Greco was named CEO General Insurance at the Zurich Insurance group in 2010.

In what could be described as his biggest promotion to date he became the Group CEO of Assiucarazioni Generali on August 1, 2012. The Italian insurance company Greco now leads is one of the largest in the world. It has presence in 60 countries and has more than 80,000 employees. The company’s assets stand at more than €400 billion.

Greco has worked with various insurance companies and has always been promoted to higher positions. He knows insurance and it’s only fitting he is leading one of the largest in the world.

 

A Solid “Car Guy” At The Helm

There are some executives who excel in marketing yet do not have a thorough understanding of the technical side of a product. For Takanobu Ito he is one executive who has a good understanding of what it takes to make a car while at the same time has had international exposure and understands the all important U.S. market.

Ito was appointed as president and CEO of Honda Motor on June 2009. He has risen through the ranks first joining Honda as an R&D engineer specializing in chassis design in 1978. He was the individual who presided over the original Acura NSX aluminum frame development.  Ito has also held key managerial roles in developing small JMD cars in the early 1990s. He was also executive vice president for Acura from 1998 to 2000 giving him solid U.S work experience.

Ito’s exceptional talent is clearly seen in the positions that he holds. Aside from being president and CEO he is also the president and director of Honda R&D.  Thus he had a direct hand in what goes on at research and development which can be more tuned in to the future direction of the whole company which he is guiding.

Ito has had challenging years especially when the 2011 earthquake hit Japan which affected both supply and sales. He has since gone about redesigning a lackluster Civic and overhauled some of the internal manufacturing systems.  That’s the advantage he brings of being a solid “car guy”.