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Keeping Vintage Planes Aloft Kenneth P. Perich, ’72, ’81 Kenneth Perich Calling Ken Perich a good salesman is the ultimate understatement. He’s tallied an eye-popping $4 billion in sales over the last two years as a vice president for Rolls- Royce North America Inc. – make that $10 billion since he joined the company 20 years ago. Perich, who earned his baccalaureate in business management at YSU in 1972 and his MBA in 1981, sells jet engines to the world’s largest aerospace manufacturers – a primary market for Rolls-Royce since it sold off its signature luxury automobile division in the early 1970s. The company was on a roll in 2007, finishing the year with a $47 billion order backlog, the largest in its history, but Perich is quick to share credit for the sales boom. “It’s Global VP Makes Friends Around the World Juliet Evans, ’93 Juliet Evans always packs her running shoes when she travels, and she’s tried them out in cities all over the globe. The 1993 YSU alumna is global vice president of people management for UTi Worldwide, a $3.5 billion global supply chain corporation based in Long Beach, Calif. She was recruited to create and operate a worldwide leadership training and development program for the company’s 20,000 employees in 65 countries. When Evans plans a leadership development seminar, it’s not the typical weekend retreat at a cushy hotel. She brings groups of 40 leaders together from several continents for intensive, two-week sessions in some unlikely places – a cabin in the South African bush country, for instance, or a monastery in Madrid where Spanish is the only language spoken. Just mixing management trainees from several countries is an education in itself, she said. “We have people from all over the world coming into a class – Europe, Mexico, Asia, the U.S. It’s hilarious. Our company looks like the United Nations.” Evans travels internationally for two weeks out of every month, on average, and often stays with friends – it’s a part of the corporate culture at UTi. In turn, she frequently has friends from other countries staying in her home. “Life happens when you travel globally,” Evans explained. “You miss flights, you get sick. You see people in a very human state. It’s comforting, when you get off a plane after a 20-hour flight, to know you’re going to be with friends.” Evans grew up in East Palestine, a small town in Columbiana County, and was one of a handful of students in her high school class to head straight for college after graduation. She credits YSU psychology professor Steve Ellyson with providing some crucial career advice. Ellyson encouraged Evans to consider graduate school, helped her gain needed research experience at YSU, and recommended she look into organizational psychology, a discipline that uses principles of psychology in the workplace. “I took one course, and I loved it. I bet my whole career on that one course and Dr. Ellyson’s advice,” she recalled. She earned a YSU baccalaureate in psychology, a master’s degree in organizational behavior at Claremont Graduate University and expects to complete her Ph.D., also from Claremont, by year’s end. Prior to joining UTi she worked with Toyota, where she said her “claim to fame” was being the youngest female to be promoted to a junior executive position in the automaker’s financial service division. Evans and her husband, Steven Park, met in graduate school, and the home they share in Long Beach, Calif. is decorated with an eclectic mix of art from many nations. Besides sailing and spending time with their dog, Peanut, she also runs marathons. “It’s the one exercise you can do on the road,” she explained. “All you have to bring is running shoes.” Juliet Evans, Taj Mahal, India 48 Youngstown State University
not just me,” the VP stressed. “No one person can do billions of dollars in sales. I’m like a conductor of an orchestra. It takes dozens and dozens of people to make these sales happen.” When Perich wants to entertain his Rolls-Royce clients, he gives them an experience they’ll never forget: a bumpy ride in a World War II vintage airplane, complete with a fighter pilot’s uniform and an open-air machine gun turret. “Out of all the events Roll-Royce does – including the Master’s golf tournament and the Indy 500 – our customers’ favorite is flying in those vintage planes,” he said. Aerospace sales has been a dream job for the Warren native, who fantasized about flying since his father, a professional photographer, took him along on an aerial photo shoot as a small boy. Now a jet-rated commercial pilot, he started flight training at 16 and had his first pilot’s license at 18. For Perich, the Rolls-Royce position has opened doors to pursue another passion – preserving and showcasing vintage Alumni Spotlight aircraft, like the old World War II bombers. He’s founder and executive director of the National Aviation Heritage Invitational, held annually in Reno, Nev. to spotlight refurbished aircraft dating back to the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s. It’s presented by Rolls-Royce in partnership with the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, the National Aviation Hall of Fame and the Reno Air Foundation. The event has put him on a first-name basis with aerospace greats who share his passion, such as astronauts Neil Armstrong and Jim Lovell. “I look at myself, a kid from Warren Ohio, and I’ve had the chance to share the podium with a lot of aviation legends,” he mused. “I think it’s pretty cool.” Perich lives in Oak Hill, Va., with his wife, the former Judy Popovich, also a YSU grad (’74) with a bachelor’s degree in medical technology. So far, only one of the couple’s three daughters, Regina, has caught the flying bug. She’s business coordinator for the Cavanaugh Flight Museum, a nonprofit operation near Dallas that restores vintage aircraft. Met Debut Gives Operatic Career a Boost Gary Lehman, ’87 Growing up in Niles, Ohio, Gary Lehman knew exactly what he wanted to do with his life. He’d join the Navy, and then he’d follow his father and brother to work at RTI Niles, a local titanium mill. But Lehman had a surprising change of heart. Encouraged by his high school chorus director and his YSU voice instructor David Starkey, he earned a baccalaureate in vocal performance from YSU’s Dana School of Music and set out to become an opera singer. Now the 1987 alumnus performs operatic roles around the world. His career reached a peak in March when he was tapped to perform the male lead in a production of “Tristan und Isolde” – one of the most difficult tenor roles ever written – at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Lehman said his debut at the prestigious opera house has given his career a major boost. “I’ve been performing all over the world, and I’ve been paying the bills,” he related, “but things have really started to pick up since my debut at the Met.” Lehman’s Metropolitan Opera debut was serendipitous. He’d been recruited to serve as a second cover, ready to fill in as Tristan, the male lead, if the first cover could not perform. Lehman had recently prepared to serve as first cover for the same opera in Los Angeles, though he was never called on to sing the role there. Remarkably, the lead male singer Gary Lehman and the first cover both became ill on the same evening, and Lehman stepped in to sing the role. That same night the lead female singer also got sick and left the stage in the middle of the performance, to be replaced by an understudy. Lehman and his female counterpart received rave reviews for their performance of the five-hour opera before a Met crowd of 3,500. “I was in the right place at the right time, and I was prepared,” he said of that fateful night. Lehman’s operatic career has spanned two decades and included leading roles in cities such as Los Angeles, Boston, Orlando, Philadelphia, Dallas and St. Louis, as well as performances abroad in Germany, Finland and Montreal, Canada. He remembers taking some ribbing from family members in the early days of his career. “My parents would suggest I try teaching. They’d ask how I could expect to make a living just singing,” he recalled. “And it didn’t happen overnight.” Lehman met his wife, Susan Foster, a Cortland, Ohio, native and also an opera singer, when both were enrolled in a training program at the Chicago Lyric Opera Center for American Artists at The Lyric Opera of (continued on page 50) Summer 2008 49
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