Case Western Reserve’s 2016 commencement address will be delivered by double alumnus, university trustee and EY Global Chairman and CEO Mark A. Weinberger, President Barbara R. Snyder announced today.
“Mark’s diversity of experience as an executive, public official and entrepreneur give him extraordinary perspective on the world today,” President Snyder said, “as well as major trends approaching. He will have invaluable advice for our graduates.”
Weinberger, who earned his JD and MBA from Case Western Reserve, became global chairman and CEO of EY (formerly Ernst & Young) in 2013 after most recently serving as EY’s global vice chair of tax. He actually started with EY (then known as Ernst & Whinney) while a student at Case Western Reserve, working on tax returns in the Cleveland office. Weinberger’s career has also included serving in multiple roles in the federal government and co-founding his own law and legislative advisory firm.
Among other public service roles, Weinberger served as assistant secretary of the United States Department of the Treasury (Tax Policy) in the George W. Bush administration and was appointed by President Bill Clinton to serve on the Social Security Advisory Board. Weinberger served as chief tax and budget counsel to U.S. Sen. John Danforth, R-Mo.; chief of staff of President Clinton’s 1994 Bipartisan Commission on Entitlement and Tax Reform; and on the National Commission for Retirement Policy. He also co-founded Washington Counsel, P.C., a Washington D.C.-based law and legislative advisory firm that merged into EY and now operates as Washington Council EY.
Today, EY employs 230,000 people in more than 150 countries, providing a broad range of accounting, tax, transaction and advisory services. As chair and CEO, Weinberger has led the firm to be the growth leader among the highly competitive “big four” for the past three years. These results have been a product of the strategy put in place that emphasizes the organization’s purpose—Build a Better Working World—and focuses on global integration, exceptional client service and high-performance teaming.
Weinberger also has emphasized the importance of diversity and inclusion to the organization, including board representation from around the world, mentoring for women and minority employees, and metrics that measure partners in part by the composition and success of their teams.
“When you have teams that are diverse and inclusive,” Weinberger said in a 2014 interview with DiversityInc, “you absolutely have a higher product, more quality, better financial results and, frankly, a better environment within to work.”
In a lecture last fall at Cornell University, he expanded upon that theme. Ninety percent of individuals under 30 live in emerging nations, Weinberger noted. This demographic shift combined with the digital disruption we are seeing around the world is an enormous market opportunity for companies. Organizations have a much better chance of identifying and seizing on these opportunities if their staffs—and leadership—include a broad range of background, experiences, ethnicities and more.
“If you don’t have the right people making decisions,” Weinberger said at Cornell, “you will get the wrong answers.”
Weinberger is a regular participant at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where he makes presentations annually. He is chair of the Business Roundtable’s Tax and Fiscal Policy Committee, and has leadership roles in the Foreign Investment Advisory Council in Russia and the International Business Leaders Advisory Council in China.
In 2013, Weinberger received the Distinguished Alumnus Award from the Weatherhead School of Management and School of Law, marking the first time a Case Western Reserve graduate has received this honor from two of the university’s schools. That year, he also served as the law school’s commencement speaker, and EY also gave its historical archives to the university’s Kelvin Smith Library. (Part of the firm’s roots date back to 1903 in Cleveland, when brothers launched the company Ernst and Ernst.)
In 2014, Weinberger joined the university’s board of trustees, citing Case Western Reserve’s enormous influence on his professional and civic life.
Weinberger will speak at the university’s morning convocation on Sunday, May 15, when graduates-to-be from all of the university’s schools gather at 9:30 a.m. in the Veale Convocation, Recreation and Athletic Center. For more information about the event and to register, please visit case.edu/events/commencement/.