History

William Schreyer, former chairman and CEO of Merrill Lynch, was appointed to the Board of Trustees at Penn State University by Governor Thornburgh in 1986 and served as the President of the Board from 1993 – 1995. During his tenure, he served on every committee including the Executive Committee, Presidential Selection Committee, and the Distinguished Alumni Committee. He also served as chairman of the Campaign for Penn State which raised more than $350 million to strengthen academic programs from 1984 – 1990. Mr. Schreyer now serves as an Emeritus Trustee.

While serving as the chairman and CEO of Merrill Lynch, William Schreyer developed a relationship with Erik Peterson, senior vice president and director of studies for the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). For four decades CSIS has been dedicated to providing world leaders with strategic insights on, and policy solutions to, current and emerging global issues. It was founded in 1962 by David Abshire and Admiral Arleigh Burke as a bipartisan, non-profit organization. It is led by John J. Hamre, former Deputy Secretary of Defense. It is guided by a board of trustees chaired by former Senator Sam Nunn and consists of prominent individuals from both the public and private sector, including former U.S. Trade Representative William Brock; former Secretary of Defense Harold Brown; former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski; former Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen; former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger; former Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger, and William Schreyer, chairman emeritus of Merrill Lynch.

Mr. Peterson, also a William Schreyer Chair in Global Analysis, is the co-director of the Seven Revolutions Project, a CSIS program that examines trends in seven areas of change and their effects on corporations and industry. The “Seven Revolutions” initiative at CSIS is an ongoing project to identify and analyze the issues that policy makers, business figures, and other leaders will face in 2025. The goal of the project is to promote strategic, forward-looking thinking by current and future leaders about how the world will change over the next 25 years and what that change will mean for international leadership. The seven areas of revolutionary change are:

• Population
• Resource management
• Technology innovation and diffusion
• Development and diffusion of knowledge
• Economic integration
• Conflict
• The challenge of governance

Atif Ghauri, a Schreyer Honors College student at Penn State, interned at CSIS and worked with Erik Peterson. It was his relationship, along with Erik’s connection to William Schreyer, which led to the inception of The Next CEO. In the beginning, The Next CEO was merely an idea which started as a discussion between Atif and his Smeal College roommate, Ryan Newman, late into the night in their Atherton Hall dorm room.

Atif and Ryan began discussing the possibility of presenting the "Seven Revolutions" to fellow students and then pitting them in a competition in which they would role play as CEOs of major multi-national companies, with faculty members acting as judges, a concept not unlike a corporate board. The first The Next CEO was led by Erik Peterson, Atif Ghauri, and Ryan Newman in the basement of the Nittany Lion Inn a few months prior to September 11th. At the event, there were two people in the audience, but the competition was considered an exciting and successful one-time event.

Through the on-going commitment and collaboration of Erik Peterson, CSIS, and the Penn State Smeal College Office of Corporate Relations, the event was made into an annual, public competition judged and funded by our esteemed Corporate Associates. In fact, the event now includes a trip to CSIS in Washington, D.C., where the student participants have the privilege of being trained on the Seven Revolutions by Erik Peterson and a bevy of some of the world’s foremost scholars. Past judges of the event have included:

• Leo Daley, Vice President of Finance, CFO and Controller, Air Products and Chemicals
• Kirk Rothrock, President, Intracorp
  
• Mike McGranaghan, Vice President of Group Finance Medical Devices & Diagnostics Group Operating Committee, Johnson & Johnson
  
• Colin Watts, Worldwide President, McNeil Nutritionals, LLC, Johnson & Johnson
  
• Stuart Hoffman, Senior Vice President and Chief Economist, PNC Financial Services Group.

Now in its seventh year, The Next CEO occurs before an audience of hundreds each spring. The collaboration is unique in that CSIS currently participates in such a way with only one university in the world, Penn State.