Benjamin Akande ' "The Reliever: Overcoming Employment Transition to Succeed" from Dean SBT on Vimeo.
GO! Network August 10, 2010
Incoming President Dr. Benjamin Akande Inspires at First Podium Appearance
By Westminster College | on May 8, 2015
On May 8, 2015, Westminster College introduced its 21st president, Dr. Benjamin Akande – a leader who will take Westminster into its next era of excellence. Watch the announcement on video and read Dr. Akande’s inspiring words below.
Dr. Benjamin Akande, a St. Louis business school dean from Nigeria, has been selected to take Westminster College into its next era of excellence as its 21st president.
Westminster: From Success to Significance—Dr. Benjamin Akande
Members of the Board of Trustees, Faculty, staff, students, alumni and friends of Westminster, I am humbled and honored to accept the position as your new president. I am grateful to the presidential search committee and to the entire Westminster College community for bestowing on me the singular honor to lead this great institution.
I am honored to follow in the leadership steps of president Forsythe and those leaders that came before him dating back to Westminster’s first president, Samuel Laws, in 1855. I’d like to take this opportunity to salute president Forsythe. Thank you.
I’d like to express special thanks to Wally Head, outgoing chair of the Board of Trustees, and Hal Oakley, the incoming chair of the entire Board of Trustees.
We have great work to do together as we advance the strategic plan and develop a national reputation for success in developing young men and women from all over the world to be leaders in a global community.
I also want to pay homage to those who made it possible for me to advance in my own lifetime:
To my Lord and Savior, who shepherds me and whose word guides me in every endeavor of my life.
To my parents, Rev. Dr. Samuel Ola. Akande and my mother Mrs. Comfort Olalonpe, his wife of 58 years, who set high standards for my four sisters, Nickie, Bola, Yemi, Fola, and me from the time we were born and who always encouraged us to aim high. For them, no sacrifice was too great and no price too high to educate and raise their children. I thank god for sparing their lives to see this day.
To my best friend, confidant, cheerleader, my wife of 23 years, Bola, who inspires me every day. As well as our three lovely daughters, Moyosola, Anjola and Reni, who remind us that the future is in the hands of our children.
Dr. Akande and his family as he is introduced to the Westminster College community for the first time.
Dr. Akande and his family as he is introduced to the Westminster College community for the first time.
I also want to thank my family at Webster University, my home for the last 15 years, for their support and unconditional love and for giving me boundless opportunities to grow personally and professionally. I am here in part because of them.
For me, this is the high point of a journey that began 35 years ago when I came to America from Nigeria as a 17-year-old to attend Wayland Baptist University in Plainview, Texas.
I remember the day I stepped onto that campus, and I was scared to death. What did I know? How could I possibly succeed in this new and different land? I called on the strength of my parents and grandparents.
As I continued as a graduate student at the University of Oklahoma and later as a faculty member and administrator at Wayland Baptist, I found my footing as I realized how I could help others to accomplish goals they could only imagine.
And then as dean of the Webster University’s Walker School of Business and Technology. I began to understand the power of humility – and to harness my real strength as a leader – becoming a servant leader…giving of myself for the betterment of others.
I stand before you this morning as someone deeply committed to honoring Westminster’s tradition to the liberal arts, teaching excellence and learning in an intimate environment and an iconic place, a frequent stop for the world’s most influential leaders and those who aspire to lead in the future.
I stand before you as someone who is enamored with Westminster’s mission “to help men and women develop competencies, commitments and characteristics which have distinguished human beings at their best.”
I stand here as someone who is committed to ensuring that Westminster exceeds its goals to support scholarships, endowments and facilities.
I stand here as someone who is deeply committed to working with you to serve as the navigator, to steer the ship of this great institution from success to significance.
As we embark on this journey together, you and I. We will collaborate with creative resonance, possessed of a sense of constructive impatience; together, we will ascend to greater heights as a unified and high performing team – working across units and with unbridled inquiry. We will forge our future together.
There is an old African saying: “If you want to go fast, go alone. But if you want to go far, go together.”
I have no doubt that by walking – and working – together with you consistently we can sustain and elevate Westminster’s place in the pantheon of America’s great liberal arts college tradition.
Winston Churchill, whose Iron Curtain speech here at Westminster, serves as a reminder that indeed the future belongs to those who can see it. He said it better – “Courage is the first of all human qualities because it guarantees all others.”
Dr. Benjamin Akande will take office as the 21st president of Westminster College on July 1.
I invite you to join me as we unlock the potential that we all know resides within Westminster College.
That we will do so with purposefulness and in the coming months and throughout the first 100 days of my presidency, I will engage in a listening and learning tour. This will be an opportunity to visit with as many of you students, faculty, staff and alumni as possible.
I want to hear your hopes and aspirations for how we can continue to steer Westminster to greatness. I want to hear your thoughts about the challenges and opportunities that abound for our great college. I want to get acquainted with you and work with you to incorporate your ideas into our plans for the coming years.
As Westminster moves toward the future, we will navigate today’s ever-changing higher education landscape with strategic direction as we inspire current and future generations of students to embrace excellence, cultivate their intellectual curiosity, and deepen their compassion for others.
Finally, I have a message for our young people who are pondering your college options: consider Westminster as your destination. Consider us not just because we have a rich heritage of preparing young men and women for the professions and for service to humanity. We are a great college and in the coming years we will only increase in our achievements and recognition.
Most of all, you have my personal guarantee that I will do all in my power to see that Westminster remains affordable and accessible for students worldwide who want to enjoy the quality transformational learning experience we have to offer.
I am honored and humbled to take on the awesome responsibility of leading this incredible institution with such a rich and storied history.
I thank you.
God bless you.
God bless Westminster College.
And go Blue Jays!
Pillars of the Community Award, 2012 - The Song
Connect the Dots: Breaches are Bad for Business
Posted: Thursday, February 19, 2015 12:00 pm
By Benjamin Akande
Early in February, Anthem, the nation’s second-largest health insurance provider, disclosed that hackers had compromised its cyber security system, possibly gaining access to the names, social security numbers, birthdays, addresses and employment data of as many as 80 million customers.
The Anthem announcement was yet another reminder of the global vulnerability of cyber security systems.
A few months earlier, retail giant Target reported that hackers had attacked its system. Target was just one of many companies battered by cyber attacks last year. The U.S. Secret Service reported that hackers hit the in-store cash register systems at several large companies, including Target, Supervalu and UPS Stores. The Department of Homeland Security followed up with an advisory warning that the attacks were particularly pervasive. The Department added that the hackers stole data of millions of credit and debit cards from U.S. consumers. The companies apparently were not aware of the thefts at the time.
Authorities say the hackers sell the payment information of millions of U.S. consumers overseas on the black market. In the majority of the instances, these companies — and the consumers — are not aware of these breaches.
Cyber attacks are not confined to corporate America. Several municipalities around the country, including Columbia, Missouri, as well as federal government agencies such as the Pentagon have been casualties of these attacks.
As for Anthem, many observers see the recent attack as a wake-up call for the health-care industry and for the corporate world.
But in this high-tech age, cyber security breaches are a potential Achilles heel for everyone—businesses, nonprofits and government agencies. In addition to posing a significant risk to the bottom line of businesses, they also present a huge global security risk. The problems with cybersecurity only are likely to get worse. Forbes predicts that 2015 will be a big year for cyber attacks — just like it was in 2014 and 2013.
Like many farsighted universities around the country, Webster University has been taking steps to make the world more secure from hackers.
In the past year, the Walker school has declared its intentions to be a leader in preparing the next generation of cyber warriors to prevent and engage via a new master’s degree in cybersecurity management. The degree prepares students for positions in the public and private sectors, and for running or protecting computer systems, information, networks, IT infrastructure and communication networks.
Like most of our degrees at the Walker school, the MS in cybersecurity management is market-relevant. It is designed to teach the students how to solve and prevent problems for their future employers. Students learn how to use their practical and theoretical knowledge of cybersecurity to analyze real-world problems.
Such skills are desperately needed in today’s world.
Vast multi-national criminal networks continue to make huge profits from information stolen from large corporations and their vendors. The world’s leading law enforcement agencies, such as the FBI, Scotland Yard, the U.S. Secret Service and Interpol, have taken great strides in trying to keep up with the criminals or stay ahead of them. But the criminals are becoming increasingly sophisticated and have invested considerable resources into staying ahead of law enforcement. Furthermore, they now have greater expertise and more access to purchasing tools online to subvert cybersecurity systems of large corporations.
The porousness of cybersecurity systems also poses a threat to national and global security. Hackers have targeted both sides of the Russia-Ukraine conflict and Israeli military operations in Gaza.
Helping find solutions to such critical challenges is critical to the mission of any university. It makes institutions of higher education relevant and enhances their credibility with the general public. In this new and increasingly uncertain century, universities that fail to seize these opportunities to demonstrate relevance are doomed to fail.
Benjamin Ola. Akande is a professor of economics and dean of the George Herbert Walker School of Business & Technology at Webster University.
Connect the Dots: Ones to Watch
Posted: Thursday, January 22, 2015 12:00 pm
By Benjamin Akande
St. Louis increasingly is being recognized as a Mecca for enterprising and innovative business owners. In recent months, major news outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, TechCrunch and MSNBC have all hailed the Gateway City as the destination for startups.
Indeed, the number of companies opening shop or raising capital to get off the ground has almost doubled in the last two years, according to the St. Louis Regional Chamber of Commerce. This is due, in large part, to a supportive environment that offers plenty of access to mentoring, networking, Arch grants and new venture funds.
The Ewing Marion Kaufmann Foundation reports that Arch grants played a key role in creating a community of entrepreneurs. These entrepreneurs received small grants and also were connected with local support organizations. As of July 2014, the report notes that 20 recipients of these grants had created 104 jobs, generated more than $2.8 million in revenue, and raised more than $17 million in investment.
This is just a taste of many, many wonderful things to come this year and in the coming years in the commercial life of the St. Louis metropolitan area.
The following is a handful of budding companies that exemplify the prosperous years ahead for the St. Louis region and ought to be watched closely in 2015:
• This promises to be an exciting year for BacterioScan, a locally based company that offers microbiology diagnostic systems for rapidly detecting infection and antibiotic susceptibility and resistance. The company plans to roll out its first clinical application of rapid screening of urine specimens for bacterial urinary tract infection (UTI) during the second quarter of this year. This clinical, global market segment is booming, and is projected to exceed $10 billion by 2017.
Adoption of this new technology will reduce costs and delay in diagnosis, and is expected to reduce the unwarranted use of antibiotics in treatment of UTI. Leading research organizations such as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital, UCLA Medical School, and the U.S. Army Medical Institute have begun trials to use the company’s platform for rapid measurement of antimicrobial resistance and susceptibility. It is expected that this will provide valuable guidance in diagnosing bacterial infections and other related diseases. It also will help address the growing challenge of drug-resistant pathogens.
• Total Hockey & Lacrosse, a one-stop store and online retailer specializing in hockey and lacrosse sports markets, is raising capital in the private markets to propel its next round of rapid growth. In recent years, the St. Louis-based company has expanded to 24 stores in seven key markets, including Detroit, Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and Minneapolis. Annual revenues currently hover at about $60 million. With its new infusion of capital, Total Hockey plans to establish 85 stores in 20 key U.S. markets by the year 2020.
Like BacterioScan, Total Hockey & Lacrosse has been smart about developing its playbook for strategic growth. The future looks bright for this specialty retailer. Participation in lacrosse has risen steadily in recent years: Almost 750,000 young people played organized lacrosse in 2013, according to U.S. Lacrosse. And USA Hockey reports that a record number of people now play hockey across the country, increasing by 16 percent over a 10-year period.
• Last fall, CIC@4240, a company that provides flexible working space for startups and emerging businesses, opened its first location outside Massachusetts in St. Louis’ innovation district. CIC@4240 was attracted to the Gateway City for St. Louis' reputation as a destination for entrepreneurs. It appears the company’s instincts were spot on. Just weeks after the company opened its 32,000-square-foot building on Duncan Avenue, it had already had 20 tenants, including Washington University, Boeing Ventures Group and Husch Blackwell. Company officials are confident that all 70 spaces will be occupied within 12 to 18 months of opening.
• T-REX is another critical player in the St. Louis ecosystem. The co-working space and technology incubator, which provides startup entrepreneurs with affordable space and offers the community useful programming, now occupies five floors of The Lammert Building on Washington Avenue. T-REX currently has more than 100 tenants, a number that continues to rise steadily.
• Cultivation Capital is another critical element in the region providing significant funding support to financial services and technology startups. Building on a $20-million investment fund initiated in 2012, it plans to double that through a newly created fund targeting 20 additional startup companies. One of the most active seed venture capital firms in the Midwest, Cultivation Capital provides a significant resource in keeping St. Louis vibrant as the destination for startups.
The future looks bright for all of these companies –and for our region.
Benjamin Ola. Akande is a professor of economics and dean of the George Herbert Walker School of Business & Technology at Webster University.