Alumni Profile: Bill Gorge '92

Education prior to MMM:
Bachelor of science in Chemical Engineering, Northwestern University

Employment prior to MMM:
Nestle Foods, as participant in a management development program, positions as production supervisor in a coffee plant and computer integrated manufacturing coordinator.

Why I chose MMM:
My motivation for business school was to quickly broaden my career horizon, not necessarily to change it. I liked working in operations, and I liked working for companies that produced tangible products. The MMM program was brand new when I applied to Kellogg, and seemed to fit my mission: advance my knowledge in technical domains (be a better operations person) while broadening my knowledge of how businesses work (become a business person). The integration of the two objectives, as designed into MMM program, was at the time unique. Today, it is still better integrated and executed than other programs, in my not-entirely-unbiased opinion.

What have I done since MMM:
I went looking for a company that would allow me, in fact encourage me, to be both during my career--an operations person and a business person. I also wanted an industry that was profitable and made a societal difference. I found that, and after 11 years, am proud to still be an employee of Guidant. It has been a fascinating journey!

I started in manufacturing engineering, figuring doing something I already knew well would get me off to a good start. Six months later, I was asked to help prepare the company for its first ISO9001 inspection as part of the quality system auditing team. From there (after a very successful inspection!), I moved to a production supervisor role, and had the chance to implement a major software system that changed the way the department did its work. As part of that system design, factory physics principles got built right in to the software! At this point, I asked to get involved with field operations somehow--I had only a vague idea of how the customer-facing side of medical technology worked, and I wanted to know more. I started up a regional sales support office in Atlanta, providing local capability for pricing & contracting, human resources, and management reporting for the Guidant team in the southeastern United States. I was amazed to find that factory physics applies just as well to getting any work done, not just getting manufacturing done (sorry Wally, must have been absent from that lecture!).

By this time, Guidant was expanding its presence throughout the world, and I was tapped to go to Hong Kong to help get our business in Asia started properly. Building our presence from scratch in over a dozen countries was fascinating prospect, and a challenging one. After two years, we had gotten an organization built that has continued to grow the business wisely and rapidly ever since. I was then asked to move to Sydney, to become managing director of Guidant's sales operations in Australia and New Zealand, about the best job anyone could ever ask for. It was now becoming clear--I have indeed leveraged my experiences from the MMM program to combine operations and business, it just turned out to be sales operations, not manufacturing operations!

In mid-2002, I returned to the US sales operation to take on responsibility for strategic planning, forecasting, and decision support for Guidant's $2+ billion domestic sales corporation. In the last 11 years, I have worked in and led multiple functions, multiple businesses, and several geographies within Guidant. My ability to contribute in these diverse and, at times, opposing challenges is due in no small part to the preparation and experience I had in the MMM program. And it is also why MMM students are of particular interest when Guidant comes to campus to recruit.

Contact: bgorge@guidant.com

Last updated on October 25, 2004 9:05 AM

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