Episode 106c: How Northwestern Shaped the Lives and Careers of the 2020–21 Northwestern Alumni Medalists, with Former Chairman and CEO of Combe Incorporated, Christopher B. Combe ’70 (’99, ’09 P)
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Released December 17, 2021.
Transcript:
CAT RECKELHOFF: Welcome to Northwestern Intersections. On today’s special episode we will be highlighting the recipients of the Northwestern Alumni Association’s highest honor. The Northwestern Alumni Medal celebrates alumni who have had a transformative impact on their field, who have performed exemplary volunteer service to society, or who have demonstrated an outstanding record of service and support to the University.
This year’s honor was bestowed to four industry leaders in the fields of public health, biotechnology, global business and retail: Judy Belk, Andrew C. Chan, Christopher B. Combe, and Gordon Segal.
This episode features excerpts from interviews conducted with the alumni medalists in January of 2020.
Christopher B. Combe is the former chairman and CEO of Combe Incorporated—a private, family-held company that manufactures and markets health and personal care products globally and is known for such brands as Just for Men, Vagisil and Seabond. A global business executive and civic leader, Combe has advanced Northwestern through his leadership and dedication.
CHRISTOPHER B. COMBE: I grew up in Scarsdale, New York. My parents were originally from the Midwest, but I grew up in the Northeast and really wanted to get out of the Northeast and get into another part of the United States to go to college. And Northwestern was clearly the choice. We do have a lot of family tradition at Northwestern. We're actually in the third generation. I'm the second generation. My father was the first. He came in 1929. My grandfather died when my father was three years old. And my father got a full scholarship at Northwestern in 1929. My older sister went to Northwestern and then I followed in her footsteps. And then my daughters, my oldest and youngest daughters came to Northwestern. The oldest actually is double purple. She's Northwestern and Kellogg. And my niece actually went to Northwestern and met her husband at Northwestern. So we have a lot to live up to. But it's three generations of Combes attending Northwestern. And hopefully the next generation will come here also.
There were so many people at Northwestern that inspired me from even when I was young and my father was a trustee, the chancellor at the time, Rocky Miller was the one who came up with the idea out of the box of creating new land here. One-hundred and forty acres of Northwestern was filled in with dirt coming from Indiana and Michigan. And half the campus is now on what's called the lake fill. And then the most recent presidents: Arnie Weber in the '80s was very fiscally responsible; Henry Bienen globalized the university; and now Morty Schapiro is just taking it to another level and is just so caring about the students, about the faculty, about having the right facilities. They all have been an inspiration to me. And great mentor coaches like Pat Fitzgerald, Kelly and Monty Hiller, Chris Collins. And right here at the Combe tennis center, Claire Pollard and Arvid Swan who really are mentors, life coaches for the student athletes at Northwestern.
I think the great thing about a Northwestern education is you learn so much about people and diversity. And you really learn how to work with all kinds of people from all kinds of backgrounds. And I think one of the most important lessons which is taught every day at Kellogg and really to all the students at Northwestern is teamwork and learning to work as a team. And the humility of the students. As Morty says, they're the hardest working students he's ever seen. They're just as bright as the coastal kids, but they really excel by being humble. And giving back and not feeling entitled.
So my father, Ivan Combe started our company in 1949 in New York City. I was two years old. And built it up in the US and in Canada and I joined the company in 1975 to start our international business in Japan, Australia. I lived in Europe for four years. And then took over marketing and launched brands like Just For Men and Vagisil. And acquired brands like AquaVelv electric shave and Brylcreem, and Cēpacol. And it was just an incredible experience. My father was a great mentor and leader. But he really did the business all by himself. He was the benign dictator as we said. But I tried to do more and really learned at Northwestern that you really have to have an outstanding team working for you. And I feel that my greatest strength was identifying, recruiting, nurturing, developing, challenging outstanding managers for our company.
I think the main thing I'd like for people to know about me is that I am a team player. That I really try not to be in the limelight. And try to bring out the best in other people. So I think teamwork is one of my strengths. I learned at Northwestern, nothing replaces hard work. And you really have to do everything you do well, in our industry and most corporate situations. And third, I feel like now with my life as retired chairman that I want to give back. And I'm trying to bring the business techniques that I learned at our company, at Northwestern to nonprofit organizations like Malaria No More, One Acre Fund, Heart Care International and others. And really have impact. I think the key is not activity, it's impact. What impact can you have on people around the world? And really thinking about the least of us. Caring about the least of us.
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My father was very philanthropic and I think that carried onto me and has carried onto my children who are very involved in philanthropic areas. I really feel that I can bring the business techniques to nonprofits to make them more efficient, more effective. And I try to choose areas where I can really have an impact and make a difference. Not just by signing checks, but really getting involved. One that I'm most proud of is One Acre Fund. Started by my daughter’s and son-in-law’s classmate at Kellogg in 2006 to take people in extreme poverty in Africa out of extreme poverty through microfinance farming. It started with 38 farms in 2006 and this year will have a million farms taking over six million people out of centuries of extreme poverty and starvation.
And what I've found is they have tremendous family support in these areas, whether it's One Acre Fund in Africa, or it's Malaria all over Africa and in Indonesia and India. Whether it's Heart Care International in Latin America, tremendous family support and all they need is an opportunity. And that's what these organizations, One Acre Fund and Young Scholars at Kellogg, Schuette Fellows at Pritzker Law School are providing for the least of us.
There are tremendous opportunities to help people in the United States and all over the world. But where you can really have a major impact is in some of these international countries where we're not talking about helping them with their careers or with their school. It's help them survive. And so whether it's repairing hearts in Latin America of infants that otherwise wouldn't survive, or the million children and pregnant women that were dying of Malaria throughout Africa. We're talking about lifesaving opportunities for these organizations. And most of them are very lean organizations, limited in their manpower and in their capital, but they can make a huge difference.
There's a tremendous opportunity for Northwestern students to really become global citizens. I think all students should go abroad during their time at Northwestern. I think all students should do basic research working with professors, getting deeply involved with a subject. The world is getting smaller and smaller, and we really need to have people focus beyond their community, even beyond their country to helping solve the problems of climate, of education, of healthcare. These are not just US problems.
The impact I'd like to have on Northwestern and on charities around the world is to have a real focus on where the opportunities are. Use modern technology. And really do these things as efficiently and effectively as possible. And I think Northwestern is a perfect place to start. And I think training these young people to give back... I once asked Bill Gates what's more important for a person out of school to do, should they go out in the world and try to save the world like Andrew Youn did with One Acre Fund or should they like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett and John Rockefeller make your fortune and then save the world? And Bill said, "Find your passion. Figure out what you're going to be passionate about."
The great thing about Northwestern is the collaboration. It was here when I was here in the '60s, and it's here in spades today. There's true collaboration among the different disciplines. A great example is Juliet Sorensen's access to health program and class in the school of law that has 15 from the law school, 15 from the medical school, 15 from the business school working together on really difficult, challenging global issues. And making people realize, making students realize that they really have to work across disciplines to solve these complex problems.
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Well, it means so much to me to receive the highest honor of an alumnus at Northwestern. But I feel that I owe so much to Northwestern. And I'm hopefully giving back in some ways for what we gained. I mean we wouldn't have our company if it wasn't for Northwestern. My father got an outstanding education. I did. My sister, my… my daughters. It's just meant so much to our family. And I don't think I can ever fully repay what Northwestern has done for me and for my family. But I love to do it and I hope to continue to support the school in any way I can.
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When I graduated from Northwestern, I wanted to give back my time to Northwestern, and so I joined the alumni admissions council, which I think was set up in the '60s to have alumni interview potential students. And it was a great way to give back to the university. And so stimulating to be able to interview these students, and decided to volunteer to be director for Westchester. Once a year we had students, over 200 students be interviewed by about 60 alumni at our offices in White Plains. And it was morning to night, but it was just a tremendous experience. And when I started, there was not great awareness of Northwestern like there is today. Some people thought we were in Boston. Others thought we were in Seattle. There's tremendous awareness now of Northwestern and we actually are able to attract the top students.
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I think what makes Northwestern special is what Morty Schapiro found when he came here. He had only worked on the coast, east coast, west coast, Williams, USC. And he found the humility of the students. And I think humility is the most important characteristic because it means you never stop learning. You learn from everybody you ever meet. And I think that's what's special about Northwestern is that it teaches students that you're never going to have all the answers. You can ask a lot of questions, but at some point you have to make decisions. And I think Northwestern helps you to realize how to make decisions. Working with other people, being a long-term thinker. So I think that's exactly what Northwestern teaches. And as I've said, the collaboration of working with other people and other disciplines to maximize the opportunity. And maximize the impact that you can have.
When I started as a trustee 21 years ago, Henry Bienen announced a capital campaign to raise a billion dollars in five years. They raised it in two years and ended up at $1.55 billion. When Morty Schapiro came in, they did a strategic plan and came up with a capital campaign of $3.75 billion. I happened to be chairman the first year of the campaign. And I was flying up from where I live now in Florida to Chicago. And I was literally crying on the airplane because Morty sent out an email to all of the trustees and to the university saying the first thing he was going to do was to eliminate student loans. So no student has to take out a student loan starting with three years ago's class at Northwestern. And the facilities that we built, the new Kellogg hub, the new music school, the visiting center, and the biomedical research building in Chicago is just magnificent.
And I understand employs about 2000 researchers working on neurological diseases like ALS, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and is supposed to have an economic impact on Chicago of $3.9 billion the first 10 years. And NIH funding of $1.5 billion. And they're going to cure major diseases at this location. And top researchers, and we're attracting top people, Nobel laureates and people like John Rogers that are changing the world. So it's just so rewarding to be involved in this campaign for Northwestern that we've now raised the bar to $5 billion, and I'm sure we're going to get there.
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Well, the advice that I would give Northwestern students... There was a Notre Dame provost that gave the commencement speech and he reminded these students that they're not in trade school. They're not learning for a job, they're learning to learn. And to gain a passion. And so I think it's really important for students to have a broad education, take advantage of all the different areas. But all the other schools, and you really need to be well-rounded. When they started the honors med program at Northwestern back in the '60s it was a six year program. Two years undergrad, four years medical school. And they found I think that the students really need to be more well-rounded, and they changed it to a seven year program. So it's three years undergraduate because you really want to not just take the science and the math to be a doctor. You don't just want to take political science to be a lawyer. You need to take a variety of courses so you really can be flexible with your career.
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CAT RECKELHOFF: Thanks for tuning into this special episode of Intersections and congratulations to our four Alumni Medalists for this incredible and prestigious honor. If you missed the President’s Alumni Panel, we’ve included a link to the recording in the show notes. Hear President Morton Schapiro lead a discussion with the Alumni Medalists about how the University shaped their lives and careers. To our alumni listeners, if you know an alum whose life, work, and service truly exemplify the ideals of Northwestern University and deserve recognition for their accomplishments, please go to alumni.northwestern.edu/medal to access the form to nominate them; we will also include a direct link to the nomination form in the show notes.