Executive Insights: Sears CEO to Speak at Smeal April 13

Lou D'Ambrosio, president and CEO of Sears Holdings Corp., is scheduled to speak at the Penn State Smeal College of Business on April 13 as a guest of the college's executive speaker series, Leadership in Focus: Executive Insights. D'Ambrosio, a Smeal alumnus, will join Smeal Dean James B. Thomas for an interactive on-stage conversation at 11:15 a.m. in the Business Building's Struthers Auditorium (110 BB). The talk is free and open to the public.

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. (March 29, 2012) -- Lou D'Ambrosio, president and CEO of Sears Holdings Corp., is scheduled to speak at the Penn State Smeal College of Business on April 13 as a guest of the college's executive speaker series, Leadership in Focus: Executive Insights.

D'Ambrosio, a Smeal alumnus, will join Smeal Dean James B. Thomas for an interactive on-stage conversation at 11:15 a.m. in the Business Building's Struthers Auditorium (110 BB). The talk is free and open to the public.

D'Ambrosio was appointed president and CEO of Sears in February 2011. Prior to that, he was CEO of Avaya, a Fortune 500 global telecommunications and technology firm, where he led a transformation of the organization and a successful $8.3 billion private equity transaction.

Prior to becoming CEO, D'Ambrosio chaired Avaya's operating committee and was president of sales and marketing. Before joining Avaya as senior vice president of its global services business unit, he spent 16 years at IBM, where he held several executive posts and was a member of the worldwide management committee. His roles included leading strategy for global services, sales and marketing for software, and industry operations for Asia Pacific.

He holds a bachelor's degree in Management from Smeal, where he graduated summa cum laude and valedictorian, and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.

Executive Insights, an initiative started in the 2006-2007 academic year, is designed to complement the Smeal educational experience by bringing high-profile business leaders to the college to connect with students, faculty, and administrators to share some of their business expertise and experiences in leadership.

Past Executive Insights guests include Daniel Mead, president and CEO of Verizon Wireless; Karen Quintos, senior vice president and chief marketing officer for Dell; and Barry Salzberg, CEO of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu.

For more information on the Executive Insights series, visit www.smeal.psu.edu/about/lecture/execinsights.

REPORTERS & EDITORS: For more information, please contact Victoria Fryer in the Smeal College of Business Media Relations Office at 814-863-3798 or mediarelations@smeal.psu.edu.

Penn State's Smeal College of Business offers highly ranked undergraduate, MBA, executive MBA, Ph.D., and executive education opportunities to more than 5,500 students at all levels. Featuring academic departments of accounting, finance, management and organization, marketing, risk management, and supply chain and information systems, the college is also home to major research centers such as the Center for Supply Chain Research, the Institute for the Study of Business Markets, the Farrell Center for Corporate Innovation and Entrepreneurship, the Center for Global Business Studies, and the Center for the Management of Technological and Organizational Change.