Citizen ’Cane

Adaptation Is Key for New UM Trustee

After a long career in the technology industry, T. Kendall “Ken” Hunt, B.B.A. ’65, founded VASCO Data Security International, a software company that provides online authentication and e-signature solutions. Today he is chairman and CEO of the Chicago-based enterprise, which serves 10,000 businesses in 110 countries, including major banks, government agencies, and health care organizations.

A member of the UM President’s Council and School of Business Administration’s Board of Overseers, Hunt was elected alumni trustee on the Alumni  Board of Directors in 2012.

He says that, in the tech arena, it pays to adapt and to “never give up”—lessons he grasped early. “I was attending the University of Miami on a football scholarship and was a starting halfback with a reasonably good chance of playing in the pros,” relates Hunt. “Then, on a visit to a firing range, someone accidentally shot me in the leg with an automatic, shattering the bone just above the ankle. It put an end to my plans for football. I wasn’t happy, but I decided to reinvent myself as a focused student working toward a business degree and a business career.”

Hunt’s degree led to a good job at IBM, then to a technology-services corporation, where he eventually headed up a $220 million global division. From there he was recruited as CEO of an electronic-training-solutions company.

A disagreement with its founder about strategy caused Hunt to launch his own consulting firm at age 41. In 1989 he came across a struggling startup whose security technology could generate one-time passwords for people making network connections. He bought the venture by taking out a second mortgage on his home. “That was the start of VASCO,” he recalls.

The company soared with the rise of the Internet and online banking—until the 2008 financial sector crash. “Once again, it was time to take stock,” Hunt says. Instead of cutting back, he expanded into Turkey, Spain, Chile, and India, and invested in a cloud-based authentication product—more bold moves in a lifetime of successful adaptation.

“In some ways,” Hunt reflects, “getting shot in the leg may be one of the most important and instructive things that ever happened to me.”

—Peter Haapaniemi (From BusinessMiami)

The post Adaptation Is Key for New UM Trustee appeared first on University of Miami: Miami Magazine.

CPS Energy is bringing new energy, like Centennial Solar Farm, to San Antonio. Photos by Vincent McDonald/CPS Energy

For Doyle Beneby, M.B.A. ’97, being bullish on alternative energy deep in the heart of oil country isn’t a paradox; it’s just good business sense.

The Texas-sized CEO (he’s 6’5”) is bringing seemingly immovable forces—environmentalists and fossil-fuel-friendly executives—to negotiations in the Lone Star State’s second-biggest city. In the process he’s making serious strides toward meeting San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro’s challenge to pump up the use of low-carbon fuels by 2020.

As the head of CPS Energy, the nation’s largest combined municipal utility company (gas and electric), Beneby has fast gained a reputation for supporting traditional low-impact energy sources like wind and solar as well as fossil fuels that are cleaner and safer than their predecessors.

To that end, CPS Energy recently spent $500 million to buy a clean-burning natural gas plant, a move that should enable its 35-year-old coal-burning facility to be retired about a decade ahead of schedule.

“Rather than spend a half-billion dollars retrofitting an old plant, we chose to invest in newer technology with renewable energy and natural gas options,” explains Beneby, who was named 2012 Utility CEO of the Year by the Solar Electric Power Association. “As a municipal utility, we can take a longer view and make strategic decisions looking out over the next decade or two. Because we don’t have to answer to a quarterly earnings call, our investment decisions are driven by choices that benefit our company and customers over the long run.”

Some of those long-range benefits, he notes, include fewer regulations and lower environmental impact.

The strategy has drawn national and international players. Beneby brokered a deal with two South Korea-owned firms to build a solar-power field with the capacity to service 80,000 homes. The plan includes the creation of solar-cell company Nexolon’s first American manufacturing plant, expected to bring at least 800 new jobs and $38 million in annual payroll to San Antonio.

Since Beneby joined CPS Energy in August 2010 from private Chicago-based utility company Exelon, where he served as energy division president, at least eight clean-technology energy operations have set up shop in San Antonio, potentially adding more than 2,000 area jobs. With this kind of buzz, the city may become known as the nation’s alternative-energy capital, and Texas could break into the top five solar-producing states.

Still, Beneby says he never intended to become a leader in clean energy. At each turn, though, it just seemed to be the right move, particularly when it came with the bonus of attracting businesses and jobs.

But, warns the Miami native and former engineer for Florida Power & Light, “It can’t be all innovation. You have to do the basics well, too, and I’m fortunate to be working for one of the best utilities in the business.

“If CPS Energy does all of these other things, but the grid goes down and people lose power for a day, then we haven’t done our job well,” Beneby continues. “I’ll admit, though, it is fun having both responsibilities. Articulating a vision and now highlighting my new hometown, San Antonio, as a model for what the industry can do—that is fulfillment.” —Robert Strauss

CPS Energy’s CEO Doyle Beneby, M.B.A. ’97

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