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Andre Hughes, ’88, vividly remembers the day he approached Accenture's development committee with a new idea and requested $7 million in funding. Though Hughes had just made partner at the global management-consulting firm, part of his request was a personal commitment to deliver $30 million in profits in one year. And if he wasn’t successful, he swore, he would hand over his badge.
Six months later, after receiving $7.5 million to fund the venture, Hughes’ team had only generated $5 million in sales. “The team was uneasy with the results and asked for an extension,” recalled Hughes, who joined Accenture in 1988. “But when you make a commitment,” Hughes said, “integrity tells us you need to stick by your word.’”
By the one-year deadline, Hughes’s team had generated $123 million in revenue. “I am very grateful for this word called faith,” said Hughes, who is now a global managing director at Accenture. “Faith is made up of two things: The first is belief. The second is the tenacity to couple that belief with action. The question is, when the going gets tough, do you really believe your stuff?” Four years later, the team was generating $600 million in revenue.
Hughes was the first keynote speaker at the 27th Annual DuSable Conference, which took place November 5 at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Chicago. The conference was named for Jean Baptiste Point DuSable, a Haitian immigrant who was Chicago’s first settler and founder. The purpose of this year’s conference—presented by the African American MBA Association and sponsored by Credit Suisse-was to bring synergy to Booth students and alumni, as well as to business leaders and partners of the Booth community.
Faith is only the beginning, Hughes told the audience. The other important factor in business success is building relationships founded on compassion. Hughes talked about growing up on Chicago’s South Side, when he and his friends used to play kickball in nearby alleys. When it was time to pick teams, “if you could run fast; if you could jump high; if you had the skills to help me win, that’s how I picked. The second way I picked was people that I knew, liked, trusted—my buddies. That was when I was 10 and 12,” Hughes said. “Then, I came to corporate America. How do we ‘pick’ in corporate America? The same way!”
The key to building the relationships that make it easier to “get picked” is to have the genuine intent to discover someone and how you can help them, Hughes said. “If you don’t connect on a compassionate level,” Hughes added, “then you don’t connect substantially.”
The second keynote speaker, Andrea Wishom, echoed those sentiments, emphasizing the importance of intention in her own life, as she rose from being a $22,000-a-year producer at a small-town morning show to an executive vice president at Harpo Studios. There she produced some of The Oprah Winfrey Show’s most highly rated episodes, including “Oprah’s Legends Ball” and “Oprah’s Prime Time Oscars Special.”
Wishom joined Harpo Studios when The Oprah Winfrey Show was only six years old. She started out working the ticket line.
“I believed it was my way in,” said Wishom. As Wishom moved into more production roles, Oprah required all of the show’s producers to explain the intention behind each story idea.
“When you’re forced to answer to Oprah about what your intention is, it makes you smarter, better,” Wishom said.
Though she is considered a “creative type,” Wishom said that focusing on intention has helped her think like a businessperson: “I’ve been responsible for results, ratings, and staying on budget. I look at my job as being the caretaker of a brand. That brand happens to be worth $2 billion and be centered around one person.”
The speakers' messages about the importance of faith, building relationships, and having a specific intention hit home for Sheena White, a second-year student in the Full-Time MBA Program who is weighing several options as her June graduation date approaches.
"Being faithful, believing in who you are, and trusting that something has gotten you to where you are today is truly inspiring," White said. "The point about intention was also powerful, revisiting my intention with school and my goals personally and professionally. Booth has given me the ability to know I can navigate any terrain."
—Kadesha Thomas