Meet The CEO: David Morgan
Last night, July 11th, UNSW hosted a Meet The CEO for alumni. The featured guest was David Morgan, the current CEO of Westpac. Attendance was good, with roughly 600 people, aged from their mid twenties to retirees.
Westpac employs 27,000 people and is not only Australia's oldest bank, but also Australia's oldest company. Dr Morgan came across as competitive, principled, infected with wanting/using power to cause change, and a little (justifiably) immodest. He was engaginly interviewed by Helen Trinca (who was entertaining and insightful as an interviewer). Morgan is a big supporter of the Australian tertiary education system, and spoke forthrightly on the benefits of education. His perspective on this was unusual, since he left school at the age of fifteen and only finished his high school education by correspondence, before being a foundation student at LaTrobe university. According to him this gave a good perspective of what life is like without education, and inspired him to work hard when he returned to the classroom. Of his high school education he said he was fortunate that he was removed from a third rate private school and sent to a first rate selective public school.
The big lessons that David Morgan stressed were:
- Over invest in your education
- Do not only what you are passionate about, but what you are good at. Passion is not enough, you also need competence.