Book profiles residents of University Village Thousand Oaks
One was a former CEO of Trader Joe’s. Another sold his company to Playtex for $120 million. And a third is the former CEO of Hughes Space and Communications Co. and vice chairman of Hughes Electronics.
Seven retired industry leaders who once lived at University Village Thousand Oaks or are current residents are featured in a new book written by a California Lutheran University lecturer who spent five years interviewing them and compiling their stories.
Earlier this month, the four surviving interviewees joined author Virginia Gean to celebrate the release of “A Village of Knowledge,” now available on Amazon and at Barnes & Noble. The room was packed for the celebration of the book, which includes interviews with former Hughes CEO Steve Dorfman, the late Robert James, an entrepreneur who sold Diaper Genie to Playtex, and the late John Shields, the former Trader Joe’s CEO.
Also at the celebration was Blaine Shull, the University Village resident behind the idea.
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Shull, a former president of Hughes Aircraft, said the concept came to him while he was sitting around the dinner table listening to residents’ stories.
“It was, ‘Oh, you did that? You did that?’” Shull said.
He realized “the kids” at neighboring CLU could learn a lot from their knowledge.
“I just saw the breadth of experience here, where we had come up through an organization and learned lessons by doing things wrong and right and thought that could be very helpful to the kids not to have to start out like we did,” Shull explained. “We would have something to share with the kids.”
Shull said that the people Gean interviewed share some common principles, such as integrity and understanding goals and purposes.
Their careers were spent supporting people, Shull said, “so their morale is up and they feel positive and, of course, the results are positive for all concerned.”
Gean, a lecturer at CLU’s School of Management, said every chapter lists bullet points outlining those shared traits.
“Integrity, honesty, ethics, work hard, go for your passion,” Gean said. “They’re the same stories over and over, even though they’re different people. When you don’t do that, it blows up companies because I’ve seen it — a lack of ethics and integrity. And when I would say to them how brilliant they were, they would say, ‘No, it’s the team,’ so it’s also the humble nature.”
At the Dec. 5 book celebration, Gean introduced those she interviewed and invited them to speak.
Dorfman told the crowd how much he loved getting involved with the neighboring university, which prompted Gean to reveal that Dorfman had donated $6 million toward construction of a new management building that will bear his name.
Dorfman said that in his career, there were successes and failures, but that in the end, success won out because his “overall batting average was good.”
He cited as his greatest achievement developing the world of satellite communications, “so people can watch TV all over the world.”
“I’m a person who thinks satellite antennas are attractive,” he told The Star with a laugh. “Not every person thinks that way.”
Also speaking was Craig Zobelein, who told the crowd that he knew when he was 10 years old that he wanted to be debt-free by the time he was 40 so he could enjoy other passions. After he retired as a Hughes aerospace engineer, he went on to have seven additional careers.
“People thought I kept having jobs because I wasn’t successful at them, but that wasn’t the truth,” he told the guests. “I just had a lot I wanted to do.”
Gean said getting to know the participants was her greatest take-away of the project. She has become close to those she interviewed, and she and her husband, co-author and Pepperdine University professor Farrell Gean, often drive from their Simi Valley home to dine with the University Village residents.
“My family is back in the Southeast,” she explained. “This is the generation of my parents, so I relate to them. I’ll never forget this as long as I live. It was such a blessing.”
With an abundance of interviews in her possession, a sequel is already in the works.
Shull is thrilled.
“The purpose of the book was not to be a formal textbook,” he said. “It’s to be a tool for the students across the street.”