Billion Dollar Brands
Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine ~ Winter 2004
©2004 Georgia Tech Alumni Association
Georgia Tech alumni have risen to prominent positions in some of the best-known companies in the country — and in some cases, the world. Each of the featured business leaders is associated with a corporation with more than $1 billion in annual sales.
Most share credit for their business successes with the education they received at Tech, if sometimes only in hindsight. Or as William "Bill" Sovey, IE 55, chairman and former CEO of Newell Rubbermaid, half-joked, "Running the company was a lot easier than getting through Georgia Tech. No question about that."
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Thomas J. Malone,
Executive Vice Chairman
Milliken & Co.
His grandmother would be proud. "From as early as I can remember, she told me that I could be anything that I wanted to be," remembers Thomas J. Malone, executive vice chairman of Milliken & Co., headquartered in Spartanburg, S.C. "These simple but powerful ideas motivated me to set a goal of being the best that I could be — whatever that might be.
Shortly after leaving Tech, Malone, ChE 63, PhD 66, was hired by Deering Milliken Inc. to organize its "fundamental engineering department." Seventeen years later, in 1983, he was named president and chief operating officer of the company, which by then had changed its name to Milliken & Co. He was promoted to his present post in 2002.
One of the largest privately owned textile manufacturers in the United States, Milliken employs about 14,000 people in 65 manufacturing operations worldwide. Milliken is a private company and does not report sales, but total sales for 2002 are reputed to be about $3.6 billion.
In describing his concept of quality, Malone says, "I believe it is a vision, a never-ending journey; it is not a destination. It is the pursuit of excellence in everything that we do. It has no bounds. Its success is driven by top leadership in combination with educated and empowered people. Leadership has to provide the vision, create the environment, ensure that the resources are available to make it all possible, provide the people with the education and tools — and the leaders must never waiver in their total support of the people."
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Charles G. "Garry" Betty, CEO
EarthLink
EarthLink's primary competitor, America Online, is a significant source of new customers for the Atlanta-based Internet service provider, according to EarthLink CEO Charles G. "Garry" Betty.
"We have predominately been a haven for people who have had previous experience on the Internet — we call them switchers," explains Betty, who graduated from Georgia Tech in 1979 with a degree in chemical engineering. "They're dissatisfied with getting busy signals during peak hours, getting spammed, getting pop-up ads and not being able to directly access different things on the Internet."
When he took over the company in 1996, EarthLink was a regional ISP based in Pasadena, Calif., with 100,000 subscribers. That number has passed the 5 million mark, thanks in part to a merger with ISP Mindspring in 2000. Sales in 2002 passed $1.4 billion.
Value-added innovations and improvements are driven by Betty's business philosophy: "Create great products or services that people want to buy, and create internal accountability for achieving expected results.
"Customer service is fundamental to our strategy," he adds. "We want to make sure that when individuals dial into the Internet, they are successful in what they set out to do.
"That's why we're successful. And the more we can make our services transparent to our customers, the more likely they are going to stay with our service."