At age 35, he's one of Canada's youngest corporate leaders. But Randy Powell (BBA '81) has long known where he wanted to go and what he wanted to be.

    Powell is the youngest person ever to be named president and general manager of Brantford-based S.C. Johnson and Co., makers of Pledge and Windex, among other products.

    It was ambition that brought Powell to York. "My goal was to be the president of a blue chip, packaged goods company. To do that, I needed to further my formal education,'' said Powell, who has a business diploma from Sheridan College. "York allowed me to continue working and learning.''

    It took Powell five years of attending night classes, while he held down a full-time day job at Campbell Soup Company, to get his degree. He emerged with a BBA and still thinks so highly of his alma mater and its "diverse population'' that he makes a point of recruiting graduating students for S.C. Johnson and Co.

    "I believe in the power of people. The commitment you give to people comes back,'' says Powell who has applied his own style of "bottom-up management'' to keep close contact with the company's 400 employees.

    Every other Friday Powell has breakfast meetings to which he invites employees from across the plant. A forklift operator can be sipping orange juice next to a senior vice-president. Everyone's encouraged to talk freely to Powell about any ideas they might have for the company.

    Powell also meets his employees twice a week to play floor hockey and other sports at the company's 'round-the-clock recreational facility. And he frequently issues production challenges to manufacturing employees, promising as payout Powell himself cooking up steak dinners.

    It's no wonder that, when the company hired an outside organization to survey its employees, it found a job satisfaction rating that was in the "high 90s," compared to an average 45-50 rating in the industry, he says.

    Sounds like Powell may be cooking up more steak dinners for his employees.