Leadership, Patagonia-style: Former CEO Kristine Tompkins Speaks at Wharton Business School
From Knowledge@Wharton:
Kristine Tompkins, former CEO of outdoor apparel company Patagonia, pulled no punches with the audience attending her recent Wharton Leadership Lecture. Although Rachel Carson's book, Silent Spring, warned of the dangers of indiscriminate pesticide use as early as 1962, Tompkins said that when she began working full-time at Patagonia in 1972, she didn't understand how the actions of the business world as well as the behavior of individuals "affected the very underpinnings" of the individual, the family and the community. "You know that now," she said, and "the choices you make count more and more." People who can manage "the tough decisions and incorporate" difficult issues into their lives, she said, "are the future leaders."
Tompkins spent more than two decades with Patagonia and its founder, Yvon Chouinard, building an environmentally responsible and socially innovative company. After she retired as CEO in 1993, she and her husband, Douglas Tompkins, co-founder of The North Face and Esprit, moved to Chile and began channeling their respective fortunes into conserving wilderness in that country as well as in Argentina. Nearly 2.2 million acres have been placed in permanent protection to date through their foundations -- The conservation Land Trust, Conservacion Patagonica and The Foundation for Deep Ecology.
Tompkins focused her remarks on the ethical and environmental responsibilities of business and business people.
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