When you’ve been there, done that, you presumably understand it. You can talk about it in a way that others can’t.
That’s the idea behind Voices of Experience, a public lecture series that has quickly become the flagship lecture series for the Daniels College of Business.
“MBA students need something besides theory,” says Voices founder Sam Cassidy, a business ethics and legal studies professor. “They need to hear from those who have lived that theory.”
But it’s not just for students. The regional business community has responded in droves to the lectures. What began three years ago with modest audiences of 70 or so has grown into an event that regularly attracts more than 300 people.
“The university has a mission to the community,” Cassidy says. “Practicing business leaders need to update their education with cutting-edge ideas. [Voices] has really resonated with these local business leaders — people who take the ideas that they hear back to the work bench and try them.”
The series kicks off Sept. 15 with Steven Lazarus, founder and a managing director of ARCH Venture Partners.
From 1986–94, Lazarus served as president and CEO of ARCH Development Corp. and associate dean of the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago.
His lecture is titled “Failing Retirement: Some Stories from a Four-Career Life.”
Voices lectures are free and open to the public, but reservations are required.
This article originally appeared in The Source, September 2006.