Charlotte Alumnus And Innovative World Leader Verl Purdy Shares At Belk College of Business
As a boy growing up in rural West Virginia, Verl Purdy ’73 MBA walked a mile from his family’s farm to a one-room schoolhouse with a coal fire for warmth and water fetched in buckets. The path from those hardscrabble times in a mountain hollow to his life today has been a journey of discovery and dedication.
At the Belk College of Business C-Suite Speaker Series earlier this spring, Purdy shared his story with 200+ students during a chat with Belk College Dean Richard Buttimer. The C-Suite series brings some of America’s most influential business leaders to UNC Charlotte to connect with students each semester. Most recently the series hosted Purdy, now managing partner with Cadrillion Capital, founded by the Purdy and Yuhas families to invest in healthcare information businesses. Purdy also met with a smaller group of students following the talk.
As he has made his way through life, Purdy has learned the value of believing in oneself and of taking advantage of lucky breaks. In his interactions with other highly successful people, many have told him how good fortune — and their responses to opportunities — played a critical role in their lives.
“The difference (compared to others) is that they seized the opportunity,” Purdy told the student attendees. “Many of you will have luck, and you will be afraid to put your toe into the cold water and try it.” Those he knows who have flourished took a chance on luck, and they also overcame bouts of bad luck, such as changes in the marketplace or society, which he said often cannot be anticipated but must be managed.
In a second piece of advice, Purdy encouraged attendees to believe in themselves. “All of you, like me, will sometimes have someone telling you something negative about your ambitions, your capabilities, your goals, or what you want to do,” he said. “You know yourself. Do not ever let anyone define you, or do not ever let anyone keep you from your achieving your goals.”
As an undergraduate studying chemical engineering at West Virginia University decades ago, he ranked in the next-to-last place in his graduating class. He decided to pay no attention to naysayers.
“If I had listened to my professors, I’d have graduated and said, ‘I’m a failure. I’m never going to amount to anything,’ ” he observed. Instead, with a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree earned as a member of Charlotte’s first MBA graduating class, Purdy has built a career as an innovative world leader in food production, agriculture and health sciences enterprises.