New Award to Honor Ethical Leadership

The winner of the first William G. McGowan Ethical Leader of the Year Award will be recognized at the SHRM Annual Conference & Expo 2022, whose theme is Cause the Effect.

The McGowan award is being presented in partnership with the Society for Human Resource Management and the William G. McGowan Charitable Fund. The winner will receive a $25,000 cash prize to donate to a nonprofit of his or her choice.

McGowan was an entrepreneur who headed telecommunications giant MCI for 24 years until his death in 1992. He launched the campaign that ended AT&T's monopoly in 1984.

The William G. McGowan Charitable Fund was established after his death to provide financial support to organizations that reflect the visions, concerns and life experiences of its benefactor. Funds are distributed in grants for three program areas—education, human services, and health care and medical research—with priority to programs that have demonstrated success, have measurable outcomes, plan for sustainability, and aim to end cycles of poverty and suffering.

The fund's board launched The McGowan Fellows Program in 2010 to include its Principles of Ethical Leadership in master's degree programs in business administration and other leadership programs at 10 of the nation's leading universities.

When America's corporate leaders have faced complex and novel challenges in the past, they have helped guide the country to recovery, noted Diana Spencer, the fund's executive director, in a news statement.

"The outbreak of COVID-19 has raised both new and longstanding disparities to America's forefront," she said, "which once more calls for a new generation of leadership to do so by example; to support a generation of schoolchildren continuing to slip behind their more privileged peers; to address entire communities without accessible telehealth or health care; to aid working families unable to get to work; and to ultimately rejuvenate a nation stirred by the pandemic's continued ramifications."

The very best leaders, she observed, "approach these challenges with a well-defined ethical framework. They use this framework to make their decisions on how to meet the goals of their companies, while being responsible and responsive to the needs of society, their customers and their employees," she said.

SHRM President and Chief Executive Officer Johnny C. Taylor, Jr., SHRM-SCP, will be among the five judges who will select the award winner.

"The key to building a strong culture within an organization is ensuring that ethics are defined, understood and practiced in the workplace," Taylor said. This year SHRM launched its Cause the Effect campaign to encourage business and HR leaders to boldly bring about large and small changes they want to see in the world of work.

Taylor noted he was pleased to be included among McGowan's panel of judges who were charged with recognizing a chief executive officer who is finding ways to Cause the Effect "by going above and beyond to establish a high bar of ethics within their leadership and their organization."

For more information, visit https://williamgmcgowanfund.org or @FundGowan on Twitter.