Fortune 100 CEO to give Sutton ethics lecture

LAWRENCE — Roger W. Ferguson Jr. will present “Ethics and the Financial Services Industry” at 6:30 p.m. Monday, Sept. 16, at the University of Kansas Edwards Campus. The 2013 Walter S. Sutton Lecture is free and open to the public.

Ferguson is the president and chief executive officer of Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association – College Retirement Equities Fund (TIAA-CREF), the leading provider of retirement services in the academic, research, medical and cultural fields.

Before joining TIAA-CREF in 2008, he was head of financial services for Swiss Re, chairman of Swiss Re America Holding Corp. and a member of the company’s executive committee. He started his career as an attorney at the New York City office of Davis Polk & Wardwell.

Ferguson is the former vice chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, represented the Federal Reserve on several international policy groups and served on key Federal Reserve System committees.

He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, a member of the Academy’s Commission on the Humanities and Social Sciences and serves on many boards. Ferguson is also vice chair of the Business-Higher Education Forum and was co-chair of the National Academy of Sciences’ Committee on the Long-Run Macro-Economic Effects of the Aging U.S. Population. He served on President Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness as well as the Economic Recovery Advisory Board.

Ferguson earned a bachelor’s degree, a juris doctor and a doctorate in economics from Harvard University.

The Sutton Lecture Series is held in memory of Walter S. Sutton, a 1939 School of Business alumnus. Before his death in 1985, he devoted much of his time to civic organizations. Notable speakers during the lecture’s 20-year run include James Buchanan, Nobel laureate in economic sciences; Mary Faith Marshall, professor of medicine and bioethics at KU Medical Center; and James Webb, former secretary of the Navy.

The lecture is presented in conjunction with the KU School of Business and KU’s International Center for Ethics in Business.