By Jenna Kersten ’17
Can Franciscan values translate to a leadership position in an international corporation? Gary Sheffer ’82 clearly thinks they can. That was the topic of his talk “St. Francis in the C-Suite,” which Sheffer recently gave to a packed room of business students and faculty.
Sheffer is General Electric’s vice president of corporate communications and public affairs. He said his job deals with ensuring that GE has a positive public reputation. He also makes sure that the collective values of all GE employees are represented by the company’s actions.
Interestingly, however, Sheffer did not pursue a business-related major while at Siena. He graduated with a degree in English. “If anyone wants to talk about Chaucer after this, I’m your guy,” he joked.
Undeclared liberal arts major Andie Kaplan ’17 said, “It’s so cool that you can major in something and then go into an entirely different field.”
Sheffer also discussed how the Franciscan education that he received at Siena has aided him in his professional life. “We have to apply this to the knowledge of how to make a good life, and at the same time making a good living. My point here today, for you School of Business students, is that you can do both,” Sheffer said.
He said that Siena helped him to develop his own personal set of values, which stems largely from the Prayer of St. Francis. “It may sound corny, but it’s something that I think about when I have to make big decisions for the company.”
For Sheffer, integrity is the long-term key to success. “You can do really good things if you stand up for what you think is right,” Sheffer said.
In his professional and personal life, Sheffer stressed the importance of acting with integrity and an awareness of the world as a whole. “You have to align yourself to the public need,” he said, adding that to do so, it is important to understand context in making business decisions. “If you’re a finance major, that’s not enough. You have to be a student of the world.”
In many ways, this is the Siena difference. “Here, they actually want us to do good in life, in addition to our futures being successful and happy,” Kaplan said.
Sheffer’s talk was the second in this fall’s three-part School of Business Lecture Series.
