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Within the last decade, Vice Chairman Rebecca Mark has seen Enron Corp. expand from a domestic natural gas pipeline company to a global organization to be "reckoned with." Mark is currently building her third company inside Enron. "To see that come about, to see something evolve from nothing, to see a team come together and watch the business take form and make sense is very, very exhilarating," says Mark.
Enron, a $30 billion integrated energy company, is based in Houston, Texas, with operations in The Americas, Europe, and emerging economies worldwide. Its core businesses include exploration and production, transportation and distribution, and wholesale energy operations and services.
Mark, who is also chairman and CEO of Azurix (a global water company), has been largely responsible for the globalization of Enron's businesses. Last fall she served as a visiting executive in the business school's Diamond Jubilee Distinguished Speaker Series. What follows are excerpts from her presentations.
A GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE-People
Tolerance and Understanding
Mark shared some striking statistics. If the earth's population were represented as a village of precisely 100 people with all the human ratios being the same, it would look like this: there would be 57 Asians, 21 Europeans, 14 people from the Western Hemisphere (north and south), and 8 Africans. Seventy of the 100 would be non-white. Fifty percent of the world's personal wealth would be in the hands of only 6 people, and all 6 would be citizens of the United States. Seventy of the 100 would be unable to read, 50 would suffer from malnutrition, and 80 would live in substandard housing. Only 1 would have a college education.
"When we consider our world from such an incredibly compressed perspective, it points out the need for both tolerance and understanding. In fact, it's glaringly apparent that most of the people in this world are not like us."
Interestingly, however, Mark goes on to say that after meeting people from Bangkok to Hanoi, Bombay to Seoul, La Paz to Trinidad, "The more people I see, the more I see that people are the same! No one culture is smarter, more competent, or equipped with better judgment than any other." She believes that all people ultimately want the same things: safety for loved ones, health...