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.”
Paula Price (BUS ’82) shares her insights from an extraordinary career as a leader
By Meredith Carroll
Look at Paula Price’s (BUS ’82) resume, and it could be tempting to split it in two.
There’s her leadership experience, as extensive as it is varied. There’s her tenure as CFO for multiple Fortune 500 companies; her years of teaching for Harvard Business School; and her current role as an independent board director for four major, publicly traded companies.
And then there’s the part of her career that started right here at DePaul. The part where she mastered accountancy, the “language of business.” The part she spent on the ground, immersed in the many small but critical details that keep businesses running.
It is easy to imagine these two phases as diametrically opposed: first the view from the ground, and then the view from 30,000 feet. First the microscope, and then the panoramic lens.
Diametrically opposed, that is, until you hear Price tell her story.
A Tale of Dedication to Curiosity and Craft
Photos of Price on stage in conversation with Sulin Ba, Dean of the Driehaus College of Business, on April 22 (Photo credit | Working Anchor)
On April 22, Paula Price returned to DePaul to share insights from her career. She was the first speaker in the college’s Executive Speaker Series: a series, established with a gift from Cory Gunderson (BUS ’91) designed to help DePaul students envision and embark on their own paths to success.
Sitting across a small stage from Dean Sulin Ba, Price speaks in the measured tone of an experienced leader. She chooses each word with care and clarity. She is passionate about taking the time to get it right — whether “it” is a major decision in a corporate boardroom, or a visit to her alma mater.
What shines through above all else, though, is Price’s commitment to curiosity.
She lights up when talking about her early career. You can see the student in her; the young DePaul graduate, eager to master a notoriously challenging discipline.
“I spent the first several years of my career in public accounting really honing my skills and honing my craft,” she recalls. After that came a tenure in industry, when she began working with senior executives.
“What they wanted to know,” she says, “was: ‘is this a good business idea? Does this create value for our shareholders? Does this idea have a good return?’ It became very evident to me that accounting should do more than talk about the past. It should illuminate the path forward.”
It is the first of many moments of clarity – in the way Price speaks about the world of business, in the way she charted her own course through it. That fundamental insight led her to the University of Chicago, where she earned her MBA in finance and strategy. She became obsessed with putting her insight into action.
“How do you create financial models for looking at new product lines? For looking at acquisitions? For looking at research and development projects?” she remembers asking herself. “I just began building all these models. People knew that I was modeling these things. And they were asking me to work with them. They were asking me to lend my models to them.”
“I kind of thought,” she adds with a smile, “I could build a financial model for anything.”
From left to right: Malik Murray (BUS ’96, MBA ’04), Dean Sulin Ba, Laura Kohl (MBA ’94), Paula Price (BUS ’82) and Cory Gunderson (BUS ’91). Murray, Kohl and Gunderson are all members of the Driehaus Business Advisory Council. (Photo credit | Working Anchor)
Price’s curiosity, and the keen insights it generated, propelled her to the C-suite.
“Even as a CFO, the idea of fusing accounting, finance and strategy together was essential,” she says. “It was essential to telling the story of our business, to telling the story of our strategies and how they created value. To telling the story of what they would do in the future.”
There’s such clarity to the way she tells her story that it can be hard to imagine her path as anything other than foreordained. Hard to remember, too, that her time as a top leader spanned multiple major financial crises.
When Price looks back on moments of turmoil, it’s her dual perspective she returns to. Her ability to see the big picture without losing sight of the small but crucial details. To keep her eyes on the horizon without losing sight of the world around her.
“The biggest role of the CFO is to create space for innovation,” she says, when asked about difficult decisions she has faced. “And economic downturns often coincide with the greatest need to invest in innovation. That leads to tough decisions.
“What’s hard,” she adds, “is that at the end of those kinds of decisions are people.”
The People Factor
And that’s what Price returns to, what she never loses sight of in telling her story: people.
During her visit, she is asked about her seemingly inexhaustible career: the way her resume encompasses seven top leadership positions at major, publicly traded companies. That’s not to speak of her time teaching the next generation of leaders at Harvard Business School, or her service to nonprofits and her community.
It was all simpler, she says, than it might look from the outside.
“For every major move in my career,” Price says, “I can point to a relationship that is based on trust. Trust in my work. Trust in my abilities. Trust in my integrity. These relationships – they lead places. Connections lead places. Every person. Every change. Whether it’s moving to London. Moving back to the U.S. Moving into teaching. Moving out of teaching. Pivoting back into corporate. Pivoting onto boards. I can point to a person. For each move, I can point to a person.”
“You can’t be my friend overnight,” she quips, later, when Dean Ba points out that many of her friendships have lasted decades. In fact, some of them have lasted since high school. Two of her friends from her days at what was then called Jones Commercial High School sit in the front row, laughing. All night, they’ve been cheering her on.
Price and Dean Sulin Ba pose with two of Price’s close friends, both of whom attended DePaul alongside her: Charlena Griggs (far left) and Aaron Tolbert (BUS ’82, far right) (Photo credit | Working Anchor)
Price sums up her advice to the students and young alumni in the audience by reflecting on her own career and the principles that have guided it:
“I have four pieces of advice. The first is: to find your towering strength. That is, the thing that distinguishes you from the next person. And, when you find it? Own it, hone it, and leverage it.
“The second, third, and fourth, is to: Build great relationships. Build great relationships. Build great relationships.”
Photos by Sean Campbell, Working Anchor
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.”
