The Ivey Business School is not afraid to feature speakers who have faced controversy or criticism. The Globe and Mail dedicated a full length feature on why Ivey chose to invite speakers like former Enron CFO Andy Fastow, infamous bond trader Nick Leeson and former White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
Led and organized by Gerard Seijts, Executive Director at Ivey's Ian O. Ihnatowycz Institute for Leadership, this series emphasizes the importance of compassion, empathy and understanding.
“I don’t think Andy Fastow woke up one day and said, ‘Let me think how I can screw the Enron shareholders," said Seijts. “This is important to understand. I am not interested in people that do not take accountability for what they did, because if you don’t take accountability, typically you blame other people. If you read the interviews with Nick Leeson and Andy Fastow, you’ll see that at some point they said, ‘My God, I messed up,’ and there’s nobody else to blame but me.”
Seijts and many of his Ivey colleagues have spent the past several years analyzing the importance of character in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.
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