Standing out from the crowd. - Eller College of Management ...

ALUMNI NOTES &PROFILESDavid Gemelli photoAmerican ClassicDavid J. Gemelli, MBA ’72President and CEO, Gem Gravure Company, Inc.David J. GemelliALL IN THE FAMILYFamily business accounts for 64 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product, according to a 2003study by Family Business Review. The same study found that family firms comprise 80 to 90 percent ofall business enterprises in North America. The American dream — and entrepreneurial drive — still motivatesindividuals to stake their futures on the conviction that it’s possible to find a successful niche inthe marketplace. Eller Progress checked in with three alumni who have joined familybusinesses in very different ways — but are all looking ahead to the next generation of success.From the time he was young, DavidGemelli worked summers in his father’s business,Hanover, Mass.-based Gem Gravure.Gemelli’s father Joseph is recognized as thefather of wire identification, or systems tomark on cables. Joseph was the eighth ofnine children — the first generation ofGemellis born in the U.S. to parents whoimmigrated from Italy — and put himselfthrough Northeastern University’s engineeringprogram while working days at a SimplexWire and Cable manufacturing plant. “It tookhim eight years to get through school,then Simplex promoted him to theengineering department, which was fullof guys from Harvard and MIT,” explainsGemelli. “He was the only one who hadworked in manufacturing and becamequite innovative in that area.” In 1952Joseph founded his own company, GemGravure. “Gem is for Gemelli, but alsomeans ‘twins’ in Italian, and Gravureis for photographically engravingplates used to mark cables, for whichhe received one of his six patents,”says Gemelli.Gemelli graduated with his businessadministration degree from theUniversity of Vermont in 1970, thendecided to come to The University ofArizona for his MBA. “I’ve been an EastCoast guy my whole life,” he says, “but Iwas always enthralled with the West.Coming to the UA gave me the opportunityto travel to California and LasVegas, plus experience Mexican-American culture.” After graduation, hefulfilled his military obligations as fieldartillery officer, then joined AmericanOptical as a cost analyst. A year later,he moved on to Polaroid as financialanalyst in the camera division.“By ’76, things were going well forme at Polaroid,” Gemelli says. “I hadasked my father if I could eventuallyALUMNIprofilejoin him at Gem. Dad was 61 at the timewith several health issues, and he came tome and said, ‘If you don’t come now, therewon’t be anything left for you.’” SoGemelli joined the family business. Underhis leadership it has grown from $1.5 millionin sales with 20 employees to $25million in sales with over 100 employees.“I have always been grateful for theopportunity,” Gemelli says. “My father hadtremendous values and great respect forpeople.” Gemelli has worked to keep hisfather’s values strong in Gem Gravure, andconsiders the company’s greatest assetsits employees and its customers.Another of his father’s values has alsoremained strong: “Dad was always a progressiveindividual: He knew we had toinnovate to stay alive.” One way GemGravure looks to the future is in workingwith environmentally friendly products.As for the future of the company,Gemelli hopes it will stay in the family. Histwo sons and daughter are in the businessnow. “The fact that my dad started thecompany means more to me than if Ihad started it myself,” he says. “It’s theAmerican dream: he started with nothing,from a first-generation family, put himselfthrough school, and built this successfulcompany. I know today he’d be mostproud of the way we treat each otherand our customers.”Staying True to the VisionSarah Brown Smallhouse, MBA ’88President, Thomas R. Brown Family FoundationSarah Brown Smallhouse grew up observing the familybusiness — her father Thomas cofounded Burr-BrownResearch Corporation, which was purchased by TexasInstruments in 2000 — but, she says, “It was definitely not aforegone conclusion that I’d work for Burr-Brown.”“Our family operated in such a way that we were veryengaged,” she continues. “My sister Mary and I attendedboard meetings, but we weren’t being groomed to takeover.” Smallhouse attended the University of Washingtonand earned her bachelor’s degree in economics, but wasinterested in natural resources. She returned to Arizona andbegan work with Southern Arizona Water ResourcesAssociation, a group formed to promote completion of theCentral Arizona Project to Southern Arizona. Then, she says,“A couple of the board members who were attorneysapproached me about working with their firm and I accepteda position as a paralegal in water law.”Smallhouse decided to go back to school a year and a halflater. “I wanted something versatile,” she says, “so it waseither going to be a JD or an MBA.” She chose the Eller MBAand graduated in 1988, then launched the business shedeveloped in the entrepreneurship program. “It was basedon passive evaporative cooling, a technology developed inthe UA Environmental Research Lab,” she says. Her companyworked with the U.S. Department of Transportation in earlyapplication of the technology: towers designed to createcool downward air flow. The first application was at reststop tourist kiosks, so visitors could read information undera cool breeze. They closed the company because the technologywas too simple and widely published to protect. Theearly towers were all custom-built, and too expensive forthe broader market.The Smallhouse family relocated to Alamos, Sonora,Mexico, where Smallhouse opened a real estate company. “Ihad some legal background and was fluent in both Englishand Spanish, so it worked well,” she says. She operated thecompany for about five years. “It was an interesting thing,because the market was so small in Alamos,” she says. “Itwas a very international crowd of people. There was a hugeexpatriate community, and it was a rich experience.”Thomas R. Brown Family Foundation photoALUMNIprofileSarah Brown Smallhouse (left front) and her sister Mary Brownwith Brown Foundation Board members Gerry Swanson,John Carter, and Michael Hard.In the late 1990s, her family established the Thomas R. BrownFoundation. “It was part of the overall family plan for giving backand developing a strategic vehicle for family philanthropy,”Smallhouse explains. “We tend to focus on gifts that are transformative,that help organizations do things they would notordinarily be able to do.” In addition to funding initiatives at theEller College and the College of Engineering, the Foundation hassupported a Tucson Medical Center-Pima Community Collegepartnership, the Critical Path Institute, and many others.“We got advice early on to think long-term, to think aboutways to help people be more capable on their own,” she says.“But we try not to pick something so long-term that we’ll neversee the results, or so big, that we will never see them reached.”Those goals dovetail nicely with what her father envisioned forBurr-Brown. “Our family’s situation exists only because of Burr-Brown,” she says. “And Burr-Brown was never a quest to makemoney. It was a quest to make things that benefit mankind. Wetry to stay true to that purpose in the philanthropic end ofthings and constantly remind people of my father’s successstory. We want to provide the foundation for people to repeatthat story.”24 ELLER PROGRESS THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONAWWW.ELLER.ARIZONA.EDUFALL 2008 25