Macy’s President Taps Into Darden-Learned ‘Art of the Possible’
By Jay Hodgkins
As a small-town kid from Tennessee working a small-town job in North Carolina, Macy’s President Hal Lawton (MBA ’00) said a trip up the road to Charlottesville, Virginia, and the University of Virginia Darden School of Business opened up the possibilities of the world to him.
In a new profile on The Network section of the Darden website, Lawton discusses how the Darden experience changed his perspective on the world and his career, which soared through senior executive positions at The Home Depot and eBay before he was named president of the iconic retailer Macy’s in September 2017.
Lawton gives Darden plenty of credit for his career success. He said he was born in a small town in Tennessee and worked in a smaller town in North Carolina before Darden. The School “opened my eyes to the larger world” through the class environment, his peers, executive speakers and professors. In particular, he said now-retired Professor John Colley and Professor Jacquie Doyle had a tremendous impact.
“They opened my mind to the art of the possible, pulled me into activities and pushed me to be better,” he said. “I am eternally grateful.”
Read the full profile (including Lawton’s impressions from his first Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade) on The Network.
The University of Virginia Darden School of Business prepares responsible global leaders through unparalleled transformational learning experiences. Darden’s graduate degree programs (MBA, MSBA and Ph.D.) and Executive Education & Lifelong Learning programs offered by the Darden School Foundation set the stage for a lifetime of career advancement and impact. Darden’s top-ranked faculty, renowned for teaching excellence, inspires and shapes modern business leadership worldwide through research, thought leadership and business publishing. Darden has Grounds in Charlottesville, Virginia, and the Washington, D.C., area and a global community that includes 18,000 alumni in 90 countries. Darden was established in 1955 at the University of Virginia, a top public university founded by Thomas Jefferson in 1819 in Charlottesville, Virginia.
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