S2E10: ‘It Was a Ride of a Lifetime’ | (Randy Pond, Corporate Executive and Ball State Graduate)

Randy Pond is an accomplished Ball State graduate who presently serves as the chair of our University’s comprehensive fundraising campaign.

As our May Commencement speaker, Randy inspired our graduates with his story about being a first-generation college student. After graduating from Ball State in 1977, he embarked upon a successful and fulfilling career that allowed him to serve as a corporate leader for one of the largest and fastest growing technology companies in the world. 

In this episode, Randy talks about how his Ball State education changed his life. He also reveals why he moved to the West Coast and what he has loved about working in the tech industry. Randy also shares more about his involvement in charitable and civic organizations in California, as well as his reason for giving back to his alma mater in the spirit of beneficence. 

If you enjoy this episode, please leave a review to support the show. 

Transcript

[GEOFF MEARNS]

The latest guest on my podcast is a graduate of Ball State University, who I believe embodies the spirit of beneficence. Randy Pond is a native of Fort Wayne, Indiana. He earned his bachelor's degree in accounting from Ball State in 1977. After graduating from Ball State, Randy pursued an extraordinary career in business on the West Coast. He spent 23 years at Cisco Systems before retiring as executive vice president of Operations, Processes and Systems.

He is now corporate vice president of finance at AMD, a company that develops computer processors and related technologies. Randy is also a committed servant leader. He serves on a number of boards in his home state of California, and he makes frequent trips back to Indiana, in part to honor his commitments to our university. He has served on our Miller College of Business Executive Advisory Board, and for more than ten years, he served on the Board of the Ball State University Foundation, including in the role of chair, and he is now the chair of our university's Comprehensive Capital campaign.

Today, I'm going to ask Randy about his career and his commitment to service. And since Randy is here with me in the studio for this episode, we're also going to talk more about what and what brought him back to campus this month. Randy, welcome and thank you for joining me.

[RANDY POND]

It's my pleasure. Thank you. President Mearns.

[GEOFF MEARNS]

So before we talk about growing up in Fort Wayne, let's talk about your reason for being here this week. We're recording this episode on Thursday, May 4th. Two days from now, you'll deliver the commencement address at our beautiful May commencement ceremony. So you ready?

[RANDY POND]

I am. With trepidations, I'm ready.

[GEOFF MEARNS]

What makes you concerned? Why do you have any trepidation?

[RANDY POND]

So I've spent my career pitching in front of audiences, but generally they're off PowerPoint slides and I might and walk. Behind a podium is not my best Randy, but I'm going to make this work.

[GEOFF MEARNS]

Yeah. So there's no PowerPoint on the quad, and if you stray from the podium, no one's going to hear a single thing you say.

[RANDY POND]

Yes, I understand.

[GEOFF MEARNS]

Okay. So it's you know, I've had the opportunity to invite people to deliver a commencement address. And it's … it’s sometimes a difficult task. Not just to stay at the podium, but I appreciate you accepting my invitation to speak at commencement. Now, this episode isn't going to air until after you've delivered your remarks. So why don't you tell the folks who are listening today what your core message was to this year's graduating students?

[RANDY POND]

So my core message is around their engagement with the university. I, I was a student that received the benefit of a lot of help when I was at the university. I graduated. I geographically left the Midwest and I—I lost touch for 25 years with the school. And I look back now with regret that I stepped away for that long because I've come to realize that it's not just a great school, but was great to me.

I was the beneficiary of people who came before me to give me the opportunities I had while I was here. And then I stepped away. And even though I made small donations, I wasn’t on campus for 20 years. So my message is stay engaged with the university and join me in feeling a responsibility for making certain that the university can bring to students of the future the same benefits and opportunities they brought us.

[GEOFF MEARNS]

So that's a wonderful message and look forward to hearing you speak in a couple of days. So let's start with your childhood. As I said in the introduction, you grew up in Fort Wayne. Tell me what your childhood was like. Tell me about your family. Any siblings? 

[RANDY POND]

Sure. So I was actually born in Indianapolis. I'm one of four. All four kids were born there. I'm the oldest of four. My father built our house in Lawrence when I was young, three or four years old. We lived there till I was 13. We were a working class family. All of my aunts and uncles were all working class families.

My dad was one of seven or eight and my mom was one of three, the youngest of three. I had 35-40 cousins, I would guess, and we lived in a little 800 square foot, barely 800 square foot, three bedroom, one bath home with four kids and my mom and dad. My dad worked at Western Electric when I was growing up and then he went back to school at like age 35.

And I think he finished high school, his GED, and he got a couple of certificates and he became a program manager, went to work for Magnavox. We moved to Fort Wayne when I was a freshman.

[GEOFF MEARNS]

And so where did you go to high school in Fort Wayne? 

[RANDY POND]

I was the first graduating class from Northrup. So during my high school career, they cut the city into pies and they closed down Central High School and they bused the kids out to the four campuses. It was not a great first year. It was a mess. There was riots. It was bus burning in the parking lot. It was not Fort Wayne's best moment, that's for certain.

[GEOFF MEARNS]

And were you a good student in high school?

[RANDY POND]

I was. I was. I started out at Snider High School, and I was a good student. I was a really good student my first two years of high school, three years of high school. But then my senior year, I started sort of putzing around a little bit. But I still I did finally graduate with honors. I did okay.

[GEOFF MEARNS]

So did you know when you were in high school, did you know you wanted to go to college and what prompted you then to enroll at Ball State?

[RANDY POND]

That's a great question. So college had always been a desire of my father's. I wasn't so sure. And quite honestly, most of the guys that I graduated didn't go to college. They went to work for Harvester or went into construction. One of them became a sales guy. Another guy owned gas stations and one of the guys the brother owned coin operated phones all over the city, and in one of the prisons in Indiana, I think. But only one of the guys that I went around with in high school went to college and he came here to Ball State. And then I got a job in construction and I'm going to share this with the students tomorrow. I got hurt, was recovering. It wasn't a serious injury, but it was my second one that same year. My father decided I probably didn't have the skills to be in the construction business. I decided to go back to college and showed up at Ball State mid-year and asked to be admitted.

[GEOFF MEARNS]

And so that was mid-year of your first year? Your freshman year, correct?

[RANDY POND]

Yeah, that's correct.

[GEOFF MEARNS]

So as you said, you were first generation in your family to go to college, your working class family. Many first generation students faced challenges on their pathway to college and through college. Were you facing any of those barriers when you were here as a student?

[RANDY POND]

Yeah, right. For certain. I mean, again, this university was wonderful to me, I want to be very clear. So when I showed up, you know, I had saved enough money to go to school for a while. But when I got in the university almost immediately got me a Studebaker grant. I never even heard of Studebaker, I got to be honest, other than the car.

And it paid for a good portion of my tuition and most of my book money, so it was a huge leg up. And we immediately applied for a bunch of scholarships, I think I got a few later. And then I worked all through college, so I knew I had to pay my way. The thought of borrowing money to go to college would have been a foreign concept to me and my family because none of us really went to college yet. So I was sort of the first generation to go. So I did run into financial troubles at the university, and the university helped me out even after they got me the initial grants  and scholarships.

[GEOFF MEARNS]

Yeah, and in fact, I heard you tell a story about the dean of the College of Business, JB Black. Why don't you tell that story? I know it's an important one for you, not just your experience here at Ball State, but I think it had an influence on you in your life.

[RANDY POND]

Oh, absolutely. And again, so JB and I— my experience with JB Black was the first of two that was sort of in my mind catalytic to my launch…my staying in college and then my career path. So after about three years at the university, I went into financial trouble. Despite everything and working, I still was just living hand-to-mouth. And I just said, you know, I should just step out, work full time for a semester and then come back. So I went to see Dean Black to see if he could help me figure out how to suspend my grant and my scholarship money so I could leave, come back and have—

[GEOFF MEARNS]

You were going to go save up some more money, then—

[RANDY POND]

Come back and—

[GEOFF MEARNS]

Want to complete.

[RANDY POND]

Give myself a little breathing room financially. He was very gracious, very patient. Listened to my story and said, You know what? Let me see what I can do. Come back in a week. So in a week I returned thinking, okay, he's going to figure this out for me. And instead he handed me a check for $3,000, which was more than enough money for me to finish my college.

[GEOFF MEARNS]

$3,000 in the 1970s—

[RANDY POND]

Was a lot of money, unquestionably. And he said to me, this is not a loan and this is not a gift. We're going to pay this forward to you. We want you to return it to the university as your capacity allows, but we expect that, over time, to get the money back to university. I'm like, okay, I can do that, that’s not a problem.

[GEOFF MEARNS]

And that enabled you to stay?

[RANDY POND]

Yes, I finished school. So that enabled me to stay in school. And as I've said before, you know, if you look at the tendency of students who drop out in college, it's a very high percentage don't come back. Or they wait decades to come back or years. And I ran that risk. Because even leaving high school, I had trepidations about not just getting a job and making a living and starting my life, but, you know, again, with my father's urging always in the background, when I decided to come back, he was ecstatic. 

And then this was me in those moments I used to have these call my dad moments, and I’d call and say I got to work for a while because I just I can't make it work. And I had three siblings at home, so I didn’t expect my parents to be able to do much because they couldn't. So he's like, okay, but you’ve got to commit you're going to go back. And then Dean Black took that off the table entirely, which was huge for me.

[GEOFF MEARNS]

So are you going to share that story on Saturday? 

[RANDY POND]

I am, yeah. Yeah, it's one of two. The other story is Paul Parkinson, who was the head of the accounting department. He reached out around the same time, plus or minus months.

[GEOFF MEARNS]

What were you majoring in at that time?

[RANDY POND]

Economics. I was an economics major. I'm going to be honest, this was after being pre-med, pre dent, pre education, coaching, phys ed. Oh my God, I changed majors like I changed underwear. My father used to be hysterical because it was the major of the week. I just didn't know … I mean, I didn't—I knew I wanted to go to school, but I didn't have any sense for what do you do with it?

I didn't have any role model that had gone to college and gone on to do something. So I was sort of stumbling through. The good news was I made good grades. I graduated with a ton of hours, as you would expect. So Paul Parkinson wanted to know…he said, okay listen, we’re just a little confused. You’ve taken all the principal classes, all the intermediate class, you're taking an advanced class, you're taking taxes, and you're an economics major. Why aren't you an accounting major? Because I’d done very well in the classes. 

I said, you know, I like accounting, but I don't really see myself as a career accountant. And he had the insight to say to me, Do you know what an accountant does? And I'm like, No. I mean, other than the debits and the credits, I think, which I always associated with bookkeeping, I don't really have any sense for what accounting does.

He goes, you need an internship. He said if it were—I would suggest you intern with one of the big public accounting firms so you can see the public accounting side of accounting, and they're going to put you in businesses where you can see the business side of accounting. And I got credit for it and they paid me, I'm not going to lie.

[GEOFF MEARNS]

What company was that? 

[RANDY POND]:

Arthur Andersen. So Arthur Andersen was one of several of the big eight at the time who made me an offer to be an intern. And I went to Andersen because I like the team there. There were several Ball State people there who have gone on to be supporters of the university. And the internship went great, they assigned me to Cummins Engine Company in Columbus. I loved manufacturing. I'd never been in that environment for other than to work at a plant. But I didn't really understand how the accounting for all this worked. So I became fascinated with that. I like the public accounting work, the work ethic, the team. They're bright. They're hardworking. So I came back and then they said, when you graduate, we’ll hire you. And I'm like, that's great, I haven't got an accounting major. But so I came back and added the accounting major very late in my college experience, extended by a couple of semesters, graduating in August. And I started with Arthur Andersen. 

[GEOFF MEARNS]

And that's another story you’re going to tell.

[RANDY POND]

Yes. Right.

[GEOFF MEARNS]

So beyond those very important experiences, what was the rest of your academic and social life like here on campus in the 1970s.

[RANDY POND]

I was in a fraternity. It's no longer here. We're one of those that bit the bullet. But I was a Beta when I was here and I pledged early. I lived in the house for one semester. I got a four point as a pledge, which made me the butt of many jokes. We were not known for our academics. So there were a couple of us that had very high grade points that sort of pulled pull the entire house up, I think. But in general, they were there to have a good time. I did have a great time socially, but I also had to work always through college. From my sophomore year on, I worked in the Department of Economics. I worked local in the village pantry. I did scab work when they would go on strike in Marsh’s back in those days. I would go home on the weekends and strip floors and clean carpets for a friend of mine who owned a janitorial business. So I always worked while I was here.

So I didn't have a huge social life on campus, but I did enjoy the—I didn't go to a lot of sporting events because I had limited amount of time. I went to a few football games over the course of four years. A few. I probably went to a handful of basketball games. It just wasn't core to what I needed to get done while I was here at the time.

[GEOFF MEARNS]

Although I think I have seen a photo of you from that time period wearing a toga.

[RANDY POND]

That's worse. It was even after I graduated. So I'm going to be honest. That was a Christmas picture for after I graduated with the two of the guys I lived with. There was three guys—four of us in this picture with our togas on and our bowling balls. It’s still a— it comes out every Christmas. One of the guys posts it. 

[GEOFF MEARNS]

You know, at commencement on Saturday, we have a really large projection screen. Well, we won't display it.

[RANDY POND]

It was a big joke when I was working at Cisco, John Chambers had ever seen my toga picture because he might not want me in the current job. So yeah, it was a moment.

[GEOFF MEARNS]

So when you started with Arthur Andersen was that here in Indianapolis?

[RANDY POND]

It was. 

[GEOFF MEARNS]

How long did you stay in Indianapolis? 

[RANDY POND]

A few years, and I was actually working as an auditor out of the Chicago office. Plus I went to training up there and I got involved with some early content development work at Arthur Andersen back when they were doing transaction flow analysis stuff. I don't think they do it anymore. But yes, I was in Indy until the end and then I decided that I needed to get out of the Midwest. I was so sick of the weather here, and I was living with a fraternity brother at the time. And I said, you know, I'm thinking about moving to the West Coast. He goes, you know what? Let's just take a week. We'll go to the West Coast. You can interview, find a job any place you want to go, I'll move with you. So we literally went to the time trials, got in our car and started heading west.

[GEOFF MEARNS]

When you say the time trials…of the Indianapolis 500? So it was May of … ’82?

[RANDY POND]

May of ’80. 

And then I got a job, so I interviewed … oh, my God, I interviewed in 15 different cities. And I got a few job offers. But Xerox made me an offer that I could either choose to be in L.A. or in the San Francisco Bay Area and I went to work for them in the Bay Area and we moved.

[GEOFF MEARNS]

Why did you choose the Bay Area?

[RANDY POND]

Yeah, so that's a crazy story. So Bill wasn't wild about the city life. San Francisco was a wild place in the seventies, let me be clear. And he's like, I'm not living here. And I was like, we don’t have to live in the city, we can live in the suburbs around it. It's like every other place in America. And he was like, no let's go to L.A..

So we were literally driving out of the coast to drive down the coast, and we were at the top of…it might have been Sacramento Street, up by the park. And on this corner was a woman. I said, Bill, I know that woman. Stop the car. And he’s like, you've lost your mind. And I was like, no I'm telling you, she went to Ball State. Sure enough, it was a woman I knew at Ball State. We stopped and she goes, you can’t leave. Stay a few more days. You can stay in our apartment. You can stay for free. Let me show you the other side of the city. And we stayed and I said to Bill, I'm moving here. You can do whatever you want. So I actually lived with them for a while when I first moved out here because it took Bill a while to get out here, and then we ended up moving out in the suburbs.

[GEOFF MEARNS]

Okay, so your degree is in accounting, but I understand during your career you've had several management positions in the tech industry. How did you make the transition from being an accountant to the tech sector?

[RANDY POND]

So when Xerox was a technology company … I went to work for the West Coast staff of Xerox Internal Audit, and we provided services for the subsidiaries that Xerox had bought in the disk drive business. But we supported the research center in Palo Alto. They were in the media business in L.A. So it was not the network graphics side of the business. It was the non-network graphics side of the business. So I was immersed in tech almost immediately by the work I was doing for Xerox. The Xerox job made a connection with one of their CFOs who went out to a startup company and recruited me … and then he took me to my first startup experience. And with that job I was attached to an engineering team that we started a subsequent company with that we sold to Cisco, and then I was embedded in Cisco with this engineering team. And when I was at Xerox, I'd flipped from finance to operations. At the start up, I did both jobs. I ran manufacturing and I had the CFO role. When I went to Cisco, I said, you know, I really would prefer to stay in operations. I don't really have aspirations to be a CFO. I've done the work. I don't really like it that well, just to be honest. So they said to me, okay, we'll put you in operations. And they made me the director of logistics and planning. Under a brand new leader in manufacturing. And then my career took off on that side of the Cisco shop. I did that job for maybe a couple of years, got promoted to vice president, took over bigger piece of the operations. I replaced my job, my boss's job, who was the VP of manufacturing, and then or three years later, John Chambers stepped forward and said, Would you mind taking even a bigger role and run all the operations for me?

And i picked up, IT, HR, Global Shared services, corporate affairs, legal affairs. It was a hodgepodge of things…and then i ran a process re-engineering platform across Cisco for a number of years.

[GEOFF MEARNS]

And so you were at Cisco, I think for more than 20 years?

[RANDY POND]

23 years. That's correct.

[GEOFF MEARNS]

And of course, I think we all know that Cisco does phones and computer routers and a variety of tech things. So why don't you just tell us a little bit … what was it like to be in an industry that has changed so rapidly during your career?

[RANDY POND]

So we were Cisco's first acquisition. They'd never bought a company before. This was 1993, and they—um, John Chambers was the president and John Morgridge was the CEO and chairman of the board. And they were like night and day. John Morgridge was a little Irishman who was pragmatic as the devil and cheap as you can possibly imagine. Chambers is charismatic, could have been a Baptist preacher, quite frankly, was a sales guy by training. He's a lawyer by training. Went to IU law school, never practiced, always worked for IBM, then he worked for Wayne, then he worked for us. So they bought us to expand from the basic routing business to the switching business and then the proliferation of technology from the core of Cisco. We did 200 acquisitions while I was there and they've done 270 or 280 as of today, I would guess, if not more than 300.

And we made it our mission to subsume most adjacent technologies around our core, which was networking, which got us into the communications business, which got us into the voice and phone business, which got us into the video business. So we ended up in the head in server business for Comcast TV and those kind of things. So it was phenomenal.

When I got there, the business was $300 million and had roughly 200 employees. When I left, we were $44 billion and had 77,000 employees. It was a ride of a lifetime.

[GEOFF MEARNS]

And you retired from Cisco— 

[RANDY POND]

I did.

[GEOFF MEARNS]

But you didn’t retire— 

[RANDY POND]

I didn’t. 

[GEOFF MEARNS]

And so now tell us a little bit about your current role at AMD. What is AMD and what are you doing there?

[RANDY POND]

So I did retire for 15 months. The guys that I'd gone into Cisco with had started yet another company because they did several spin offs while they were at Cisco. I didn't go with them for the spin offs because we spun them back in with Cisco. Generally to get us into adjacent technologies where an easy acquisition wasn't available and then we'd buy it back.

So they started another company that I invested in and I joined the team to work on a long range plan for them and to work part time. Part time turned into full time. They made me a full time job offer. I took a similar role I had with them before, which was VP of Operations and CFO. The business took off and we sold it. We weren't actively in the market to be acquired, but we had an unsolicited offer from a tech company in the Bay Area, not AMD. So we started the diligence process. We shopped ourselves around. The deal we had was the best deal we had, so we moved through diligence. We were just getting ready to close … that acquirer saw bigger fish swim by. They abandoned us for them and they said, okay, we can't buy you, we’ll buy you later. We're going to loan you $200 million and a couple of percentage points a year. Just use the money to survive until we can come back. 

We had decided that the employees now were really fixated on monetizing because it’d been a little over five years. So we decided we should go back to the other bidders and see if they would still be interested in coming in. AMD said, We're more than interested to buy you guys. The deal wasn't quite as good, but it was good for the key employees, which is what we cared about. So we sold ourselves to AMD and we were probably their second acquisition in a year, but they really only made a handful of acquisitions over their 50 years. So they were not an acquisitive business, but they're a leader in the CPU business. They and Intel sort of owned that market together. And they were, both of them are amassing assets in the what I would say is the chip space, the device space and the things you want to own are CPU, the GPU, which is a graphics processing unit, a DPU which is a digital processing unit, which is what we did, and FPGA, which is a field programable unit, that uses a temporary solution and we were the last piece of that pie. 

They bought Xilinx to get an FPGA, they bought us to get a DPU. They were already in the GPU and CPU business, so … and they have a reasonable share of the market. They are multibillion dollar business, they’re run by a brilliant woman and a great leadership team. And when they bought us, I made it clear that I'll integrate the business, I’ll stay through the integration which is going to take me through the first part of next year. But I didn't want a career. I'm done. I'm going to be 69 years old in August. I’m not starting my career over. This time, I'm really done.

[GEOFF MEARNS]

I was just going to say this is now recorded for all the world ….

[RANDY POND]

My wife reminds me I can easily live on have what we have. If you don't retire before you're 70, I'm done. So this is a regular conversation. I have to find something to fill my day because I'm a bit of a workaholic.

[GEOFF MEARNS]

Yes. And you actually, in addition to your active business career, you also serve on several boards in California, including Stanford Health Care Valley Care, which is one of the top hospitals in the Bay Area. I'm going to talk about your commitment to Ball State in just a moment. But why do you commit that time and energy to organizations like Stanford Health Care, Valley Care?

[RANDY POND]

So again, this was an experience that I had. This was a great experience for me. So John Morgridge, who was the CEO when we were acquired, John took the pledge. He was a billionaire who took the pledge to give his money away. By the time he signed the pledge, he'd already given half his money away. John was a big believer that corporations and corporate leadership had a role in a community to give back.

We were smart, we were privileged, we'd been blessed with financial resources, and we should do as much as we can to influence the community. And one of the ways to do that is to serve on not for profit boards. Become a donor. He pushed us to donate. All of us donated to lots of things as a group, but he also wanted to serve on boards.

So when I joined Cisco, I was recruited onto the Children’s Discovery Museum Board of San Jose. That was really my first big board experience. And then I went on to serve as chair for—I was on the board for 15 years. I was the chair for four or five, and we then we sort of redid the board together.

I went through two changes in leadership, but then John sort of embedded me this thought of, I've got to be out in the community. So I helped Second Harvest Food Bank built a building. I was on a campaign forum. I got involved with RAFT, which is resource area for teaching. I was involved with the smallest Islamic education organization that talked about the pillars of three religions, you know, Judaism, Islam and Christianity. And I was on that board for several years, and we didn't prophesize. We just educated people about our similarities as opposed to our dissimilarities. So I took that to heart and I made all of my direct reports to serve on boards. It was a requirement. You have to actually be on some not for profit board, because I do believe that we bring skills that they have a hard time getting.

Our experiences are invaluable, quite honestly, in some of these cases. And it's a commitment, but it's a commitment to the community that's done so much for me and for us as a business. So it wasn't a big stretch for me.

[GEOFF MEARNS]

You mentioned at the outset of our conversation that you were not engaged here at Ball State for more than 20 or 25 years, but you became reengaged. I'm interested to know how you became reengaged and how you began serving on the Foundation Board—on the Ball State University Foundation Board.

[RANDY POND]

Again, it was a process, an evolution for me personally. So after 25 years, the dean of the College of Business was at the time, I think was Sharon Richardson. Showed up at my offices at Cisco. She got on my calendar, showed up and my admin who I adored, Kitty, said to me, you know, We were just in the Wall Street Journal….S o she said, I'll tell you what was going on at the school, what's going on at the university, with the college. And I want to talk about a project, if I can get your help. 

Okay, fine. So she came in and we started the conversation and before she started pitching to me, she said, Tell me about your experience of Ball State. And that's when I realized in my recollection of these two events that I hadn't really thought of as being so foundational to my own success. I'm thinking Geez, this is incredible. In the moment that it happened, it shot right by me. But as I reflected back, I was thinking Oh my God, I could have left school. Not coming back if it wasn't for the $3,000, and I could have been an economics major and working for a bank, as opposed to going into public accounting, working for Xerox, and having my tech career take off.

So those two things shaped my life and it changed my attitude for Ball State reaching out. I gave her a gift followed up by a couple other gifts. Within a year, Jo Ann shows up. Jo Ann Gora. President Gora shows up at my office. She thanked me for the gifts and says, Hey, you know, I've got other opportunities, more campus wide than just the College of Business I want to talk to you about it—that’s a different story—but would you be interested in joining the Foundation Board? I'm like, well, you know, I've never really been in a foundation. I don’t know what they do. She connected me up. I met with some of the board members, had a conversation with the leader of the foundation at the time, and I said to them, You know, I'm worried about my travel, but I'm going to do this.

First two years were a fiasco, truly a fiasco. I, I missed more meetings than I made because I was traveling hundreds of days for Cisco. And then things settled down. I was able to get on the calendar longer term, once I got engaged with the foundation and with the faculty and the staff here and with the students, it really reconnected me in a different sort of way.

It opened my eyes to how lucky I had been to get all the help while I was here and how people like me, who serve on the board and raise money for the school and donate to the school are instrumental in making those experiences happen. And it really sort of reignited my commitment to Ball State, the entity, for what they've done for me.

[GEOFF MEARNS]

Right. And so you served on the Foundation Board for more than ten years, including overlapping with my arrival here at Ball State. Grateful to you for being chair of the board and helping to strengthen the alignment, the strategic alignment that exists now between the Foundation Board and the University. And then as you were approaching the end of your service on the Foundation Board, I asked you if you would continue to support the university and serve as the chair of our comprehensive capital campaign, and I'm grateful that you said yes. Why did you say yes? Was it my persuasive pitch?

[RANDY POND]

So your pitch was persuasive. That was good. But it was a natural extension and a bridge from the foundation to that role for me. And again, it reinforced the fact that I knew this was going to be a big campaign. It was going to be the biggest one Ball State had ever done. And I knew how critical it was for the ongoing transformation of the university, not just my physical asset perspective, but also from the opportunities you bring to students on the campus.

And it was through your education to me, around funding from the state and what they do and don't cover and how many students get assistance while they're here of all different forms that really sort of inspired me to say, you know what, this is not that big a deal. And again, in all fairness, it sounds much bigger than it is.

I told my wife this. I love the foundation staff. Jean and that team, Mark—they do a wonderful job. They do all the heavy lifting. And I'm the guy. I'm the face of it. But it’s not like I'm standing on a street corner with a box raising money for Ball State. So I get to continue to be engaged with the students and to meet our supporters.

[GEOFF MEARNS]

And so when you're talking to other graduates or other benefactors of the university, is that what you tell them about why you are engaged and why you and Cindy, your wife, Cindy, why you give so generously to the university?

[RANDY POND]

So I do. I'm pretty honest about the fact that the university did a lot for me. Now, I won't say that I was aware of it in the moment, but 25 years later I was aware of it. And I realized that I can't not look fondly back on Ball State and really massively appreciate everything that was done for me while I was here. Because it changed my life. I mean, it put me on a trajectory I would have never been on. I mean, honestly. In all candor, I can't even imagine what I would have done if I hadn't had the experience here to launch me into public accounting, to launch me into the West Coast. That just took off. And I was telling my sister this morning because she was like, I don’t know how you ask people for money. You know, it's not hard to ask people for money when you're already a donor because you're only asking them to do what you do. And the Ball State experience was one of two my wife and I went through because she got reengaged with her high school. It’s an all-girls Catholic high school. The oldest one west of the Mississippi, and it's in downtown San Jose.

And they because of the earthquake they had to rebuild the school they were raising massive amounts of money. We got involved. Helped raise money. We rebuilt the original building and added a subsequent building to that. She was on the board for years. Education became a platform for us. Her primary donations are generally to the high school and to scholarships for underprivileged girls to go to school there because it's a phenomenal education and mine has been to Ball State. Both in terms of annual gifts. We both have planned gifts for both institutions and we make education foundational to our family foundation.

[GEOFF MEARNS]

Well, we're grateful for you and Cindy for your support. So I want to ask you one final question. It's a question that I ask all of my guests, and it's a question that relates to what we've been talking about, and to the work that has enabled you to have a fulfilling career and the work that contributes to the meaningful life that you're leading.

And this question is about beneficence, which is, you know, when we walked over here just this afternoon, we walked right by Beneficence. It is a tangible and visible reminder of our culture, our mission, our enduring values. And it means at its essence, the act of doing good, of serving and supporting others. So, Randy, would you tell us what does beneficence mean to you?

[RANDY POND]

You know, it's an interesting question. Because as a student, I thought it more about bringing honesty, integrity and excellence to gaining my education at the university. And yeah, there was respect for other people on the university property. As I've come back as an alum and got involved with the foundation and looked at the evolution of the campus and the diversity on the campus. It's the soft side of the pledge now, you know, It’s the commitment—the compassion, civility, respect, diversity of views and races and genders. All of those things now, I think, in my mind have supplanted what I had originally thought was the most important around educational, you know, excellence and honesty in education. So I believe those principles? They've served me well. Now, I'm not going to tell you I left here with the beneficence pledge on my lips. But those underlying principles we applied all the time, even at Cisco, we’d say: Does this pass the front page of the Wall Street Journal test? Can you stand up and explain these actions to a roomful of people with a straight face and say this makes sense?

We’d have to go through layoffs and reductions and workforces. It was very difficult, but bringing compassion to those kind of things and a view of their perspective on those things was important as a business leader that you lead with some empathy, which I think is fundamental to the beneficence pledge.

[GEOFF MEARNS]

Well, thank you, Randy. Thank you for all that you do continue to do for our university. I'm looking forward to your remarks on Saturday. It's going to be a beautiful day. Thank you for bringing the beautiful sunshine from the Bay Area here to Muncie. Thank you.

[RANDY POND]

My pleasure. Pleasure to be here. Thank you.