CEO of Walmart
Eduardo Castro-Wright is the CEO of the Wal-Mart Stores Division in the United States, and he came to speak to the Texas A&M MBA Students today. I didn’t expect his speech to be so interesting. He has the passion and excitement you’d expect from the entrepreneurs behind a startup, except it’s applied to one of the largest businesses in the world.
(more photos at the Mays Flickr Page)
I’m not going to go into the details of his talk - it was mostly business advice. But I really liked his views on the integrity of a leader. He said something like you must be able to look into the eyes of your employees and know you’re making the right decisions.
People start businesses - not just to make money - but to change the world for the better in some way. That’s why I’ve always been attracted to the idea of working with startups. You find a problem in the marketplace and solve it; you don’t just make money, you make someone’s life better. But with Walmart, they can REALLY make a difference in the world. He said that by switching out a normal incandescent light bulb for a new fluorescent light bulb, over the life of that light you will save 120 pounds of carbon being released into the atmosphere (based on energy usage). This year they plan to push out 100 million of these new lights to their customers.
I have a lot of respect for this guy and I hope to meet more people like him.