To return to the page where this video was posted on please visit: [On Screen Text] Dr. Charles F. O'Donnel '60 Lecture Series Presents Ethical and Moral Leadership with Alfred Kelly '80, '81MBA, CEO Visa, Saturday, October 20, 2018 >> DR. WHEELER: It is my pleasure to welcome you to the Dr. Charles F. O'Donnell lecture, featuring our preeminent alumnus and chief executive officer of Visa Alfred F. Kelly Jr. Our discussion today on moral and ethical leadership will be provided by Al Kelly, a 1980 and 1981 MBA graduate of Iona College. Mr. Kelly joined Visa, the multi-billion dollar global payments technology company, in October of 2016 and he serves as the chief executive officer. >> AL KELLY: I think leadership is, as the CEO, it's something I think about every single day. I try to set tone. I think one, that leadership was very, very important to me and I'm a huge believer in servant leadership. I think that because I'm in charge doesn't mean people should respect me, because I'm in charge it's my job to earn the respect of the people who work for me. And I believe deeply in that. I think that there's been a few things that have played into my success, starting with luck. You know, some of it's luck. Some of it's hard work. In my case, I, I purposely set out at a young age to learn as much as I could about as many things as I could. So I'm a I'm an expert in nothing. I'm a real generalist. So in my career I've done jobs in finance, I've done jobs in operations, I've done jobs in marketing, I've done jobs in technology and I purposely built myself to be as broad as I could possibly be because I think when you end up aspiring to be a general manager or a business unit president or a CEO you're far better off being as broad gauged as you can you could possibly be. I've always worked hard on my communication skills. I still think one of the best classes I ever took, I don't know if they still do it, is the speech class that you had to do as a freshman here where, you know, you were forced to get up in front of your peers and talk on a subject, and sometimes on a subject that wasn't necessary something that was comfortable for you. And you know that's another great thing about college it's a place where you should, that's where you should experiment with the things that you're uncomfortable about and work through them during your, your college years, so that you know Iona helped me become a very comfortable, confident public speaker. I speak all, you know, all the time in many different environments. We're blessed in America in that there's many great universities and this is one of them. You know, I, this place was very formative for me and I learned a lot about a lot of different subjects and a lot of my, you know, study habits and a lot of my interests were formulated here. Don Moscato, Kurt Engemann, and a lot of wonderful teachers. I had great experiences here. Oh I see Brother Devlin back there who was my, this will age both of us, but he was my freshman and high school guidance counselor in 1972, at Iona prep, and as passionate and as good a man as he was then he is even more so today. So I have great memories of Iona and my time here and I just want to say that I think it gave me much of the base of foundation of be as a, as a, certainly as a professional but also just as a person. I do think you need to take the best classes you can take. I mean, you shouldn't go through college with the idea that, you know, how can I slant a path here, and take the easiest teachers and the easiest classes. I think it's a big mistake. For me, this is the time to, you know, experiment and, and push, begin to push yourself. And so I used to pride myself in taking as hard teachers as I could and and the people that I was going to learn the most from. So I think that's the first thing I'd say is, you know, is you're here to challenge yourself, you're not here to fill time, and you're better off taking the best, the best classes with the best teachers that you possibly can. I think beyond that, it's, you got to hone your communication skills. It's still a critical aspect of being successful in life and in the business world. Being able to know how to conduct yourself in one-on-one, in large-group sessions, in smaller-group sessions, both the written word, the spoken word. So I think communication skills are critical. I'm a huge believer that at the beginning you career should go work for as large a company as you can go work for. That doesn't mean that's where you'll end up or it doesn't even mean you'll like it. But large companies in many ways are a continuation of college they just have the infrastructure and the disciplines, because they're big, you learn, you learn how to be disciplined, and in many cases they have their own training which is, you know, very, very strong and very, very good. But you get, by participating in big meetings and big companies you see how things work you see, you learn techniques. You learn how people run meetings, how meetings are run well, how meetings are run poorly. How people get people involved, how people, how you shut down people that are talking too much. All those, all those kinds of things. There's lots of disciplines that you learn from a big company. So that's a piece of advice they give most young people who come and talk to me as well. And then I'd say lastly is pursue your interests. I mean, I unfortunately have a lot of friends my age who are stuck in jobs they hate and they, there's nothing they can do, it's hard to transfer at this stage in their life and their career and you're better off, you know, figuring all this out in your 20s and 30s and by the time you're 35 or so be into something that you want and like to do that such that if you needed to or wanted to you could do it, you know, well into your sixties or seventies. But don't find, you know, you don't want to find yourself in a rut doing something you just don't want to do because...and only you could control that. You know, I'd say that would be my last message. I always tell people that you're the CEO of your life and your career. Nobody else can do it. Nobody else could determine what you like and what you don't like. Nobody else could determine what you're good at and what you're not good at. It's only you looking in the mirror and being honest with yourself saying, hey this is...I don't like doing this right or I do like doing this. I mean, I do that all the time. I try to, if I don't like to do something, I hire somebody who likes to do the thing I don't like to do. So they can do it and they can they can enjoy it, while I'm enjoying them enjoying something I hate. So, it's this, being, like, really candid with yourself about what you want to do and what's going to make you happy is important.