“We are here to celebrate the fun of being a GSB alum, ” said Dean Robert S. Hamada. “People who think like a Chicago M.B.A. and work like a Chicago M.B.A. are a bunch of winners, and every year we pick out a few to remind us of that. ”

This year, the GSB community honored Karen L. Katen, A.B. ’70, M.B.A. ’74; Joe Mansueto, A.B. ’78, M.B.A. ’80; and Gary A. Mecklenburg, ’70, with DistinguishedAlumni Awards. (See “Recognizing Achievement. ”)

Katen, winner of the Distinguished Corporate Alumna Award, is president of Pfizer U.S. Pharmaceuticals, executive vice president of the global Pfizer Pharmaceuticals Group, corporate senior vice president, and a member of the corporate management committee, the governing management body of Pfizer. She is credited with much of Pfizer’s recent success in U.S. pharmaceuticals markets and has launched several products, including Viagra and Lipitor, the No. 1 lipid-lowering agent in the United States. These achievements fly in the face of an industry that, according to Katen, has become an “increasingly complicated, highly competitive, highly regulated operating environment. ”

Mansueto, winner of the Distinguished Entrepreneurial Alumnus Award, is founder and chairman of Morningstar, a mutual fund research firm that he started in his one-bedroom apartment in 1984. The company has since grown into a $50-million-a-year enterprise, and its Web site has been named one of the top 10 investment sites by such publications as Barron’s and the Wall Street Journal. A graduate of the college and the GSB, Mansueto listed his family, Morningstar, and the University of Chicago as the three most important institutions in his life.

This year’s Distinguished Public Service/Public Sector Alumnus Award went to Mecklenburg, president and CEO of Northwestern Memorial Hospital. Credited with guiding the hospital to its place as a recognized leader in national health care, Mecklenburg told his fellow alumni that he did not expect the nation’s health care system to enter a period of dramatic change upon his graduation. And though he knew that a strong education in basic business theory was essential, he “did not appreciate that hospital administrators with fundamental business skills would be in the vanguard for the essential shaping” of the health care system.

Following the awards presentation, Davis, Roger L. and Rachel M. Goetz Distinguished Service Professor of Creative Management, gave the keynote address, “The Compleat Strategist, ” which examined the features common to all masters of strategy. Citing Izaak Walton’s The Compleat Angler, Davis characterized a great strategist as one who is “an unabashed tinker” with an “inclination for imitation” and the “ability to tell a good story. ” He also felt the “compleat strategist” should have an open vision, a personal philosophy, and the three i’s: involvement, independence, and an awareness of personal ignorance.

The Alumni Celebration, which took place at the Sheraton Chicago Hotel, concluded with dancing to the music of the Jack Kramer Orchestra.––A.R.