Procter & Gamble's John Pepper is Park speaker in Ives, Nov. 1

By Linda Myers

John E. Pepper, chairman of Procter & Gamble's board of directors and former chief executive of the consumer products giant, will be speaking at Cornell Thursday, Nov. 1, at 4:45 p.m. in the PepsiCo Auditorium, 305 Ives Hall. His talk is titled "Leadership for a Changing World" and is free and open to the public. The talk was originally to take place in September and was rescheduled.

The 163-year-old Procter & Gamble markets over 300 brands, including Crest, Tide and Pampers, to nearly 5 billion consumers in 140 countries. It also makes Iams premium pet food and, as befits one of the world's largest manufacturers of soap, it produces the television soap operas "Guiding Light" and "As the World Turns."

Business Week, which once described Pepper as "a manager willing to listen to underlings," dubbed him one of the top 25 managers of the year in a January 1998 cover story and wrote that he "has simplified marketing and product development, trimmed wasteful ad spending, and plowed the savings into lower prices."

Pepper, who joined Procter & Gamble in 1963, became its chief executive in 1995 and before that oversaw the company's U.S., then its international, businesses. Under his leadership, P&G experienced strong earnings growth, including doubled sales figures, increased profits abroad and consistent gains in established markets. In June 2000, 17 months after his retirement, he was pressed back into service as chairman of P&G's corporate board to help get the company back on track after profits tumbled under Pepper's initial successor, Durk Jager.

P&G's business models, once focused only on bringing out new brands, are much more varied today, while its organizational approach remains a balance between global and local management. "Change is continuous and we have to be on the cutting edge of it," said Pepper. "We need to be global in our financial and initiative planning, technology platforms, and career development. The insights having the closest link to consumers, however, come from individual places."

Pepper graduated from Yale University in 1960. After a three-year stint in the U.S. Navy, he joined P&G as a brand assistant on Cascade dishwasher detergent. He became general manager of Procter & Gamble Italia in 1974, returned to the United States in 1978 to manage P&G's packaged soap and detergent division and became a group vice president of Procter & Gamble in 1980. In 1984, he was elected to the firm's board of directors. He was named president of U.S. business in 1986 and president of international business in 1990, before moving up to the top slot in 1995.

He is chairman of the United States Advisory Committee for Trade and Policy Negotiations, an organization of more than 500 U.S. companies with substantial international operations or interests, and in 1997 he spoke before a congressional subcommittee, arguing for reinstating fast-track negotiating authority for international trade agreements.

Committed to community service, particularly education, Pepper has helped to establish mentoring programs in Cincinnati public schools and is vice chairman of the Cincinnati Youth Collaborative. In addition he is a member of the governor of Ohio's Education and Business Advisory Group. He also serves as co-chair of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center Development Campaign. The museum, which will open its doors in downtown Cincinnati in 2004, now maintains an interactive web site, http://www.undergroundrailroad.org, that offers historic information to young people.

Pepper's talk is part of the Park Leadership Speakers Series at Cornell's Johnson Graduate School of Management. The series is a component of the Park Leadership Fellows Program. Past Park speakers have included Daniel A. Carp, chairman, president and CEO of Eastman Kodak Co., Harvey Golub, CEO of American Express, and Irene Rosenfeld, president of Kraft Canada. For more information about Pepper's visit, contact Clint Sidle at 255-4104. The talk also is the keynote address of the student-run Marketing Symposium at the Johnson School, Nov. 1-2. For information on the symposium, contact Tracy Hostetler at tlh28@cornell.edu.