Photos by Sean Campbell, Working Anchor

The house was packed for the Driehaus College of Business’s second annual Executive Speaker Series, held on April 10, 2025. This year’s guest was DePaul MBA (’96) Julian Francis, former CEO of Fortune 500 company Beacon Building Products. In a wide-ranging conversation hosted by Driehaus Dean Sulin Ba, the audience heard about Francis’s leadership journey from student to the C-suite and everything in between, and got an insider’s perspective on how he makes tough decisions in an industry where timing is everything.

In addition to his MBA, Francis also holds a doctorate in materials engineering, which gave him an edge in an industry all about the built environment. He has an extensive record of executive leadership at several different firms, and at Beacon he led the country’s largest, publicly traded distributor of roofing materials and complementary building products.

Francis looked back on his time at DePaul with gratitude. Originally from the U.K., Francis was an international student looking to make his way in an unfamiliar culture. After a period of some uncertainty, he found his home at DePaul. “DePaul took a chance on me,” he related, “and for that I’ll always be grateful.”

After touching on Francis’s fond memories of Chicago and going to school at DePaul in the mid-1990s, Dean Ba and Francis moved on to the topic of leadership in today’s world. In a marketplace crowded with different recipes for leadership success, Francis offered a simple, succinct guiding principle: at the end of the day it is the people you associate with who matter as much, if not more, than ideas.

“I used to think it was all about the ideas, that if you just had that right, the most compelling ideas, then that was all you needed. It would work out,” Francis recounted. “But somewhere along the way I realized it’s not that, it’s the people who matter, the people you support and surround yourself with. Cultivating relationships with the right people is the single most important thing for aspiring leaders.”

Pausing to reflect for a moment, he summed up the evening’s theme: “You’re only a leader if you have followers.”

Leadership is something earned and recognized by others; it is a fundamentally social capacity. It is, in the end, all about the question of values: what do you believe? What do you stand for? Do you demonstrate the values your company professes, and how do you show it?

“Your values are everything,” Francis said. “Do you really believe in the values you claim? What about the people you work with? Do they believe in them, or do they just see them as words on a wall?” In a business environment that grows more uncertain by the day, a firm commitment to one’s values and vision can be a much needed source of stability.

The same can be said for one’s attitude to risk, Francis suggested. “One key lesson I’ve learned over the years is not just to consider the impossible, but to expect it,” he related. “The last thing you want is to be caught flat-footed by something you should have thought of,” he continued. “We can’t take anything for granted. If you always have a contingency plan for the seemingly impossible, then you’re ready for any scenario.”