Rolf Hoffmann
By Nancy Oates

olf Hoffmann (MBA '87) would not be the success he is today if life had worked out the way he'd planned. He trained for years to earn a spot on Germany's Olympic swim team, only to have the 1980 boycott of the Moscow games sour victory's sweetness. He buried that disappointment under five years of study, emerging with two master's degrees to launch a career in teaching. But in Germany, teachers are hired for life, and there were no openings for his liberal arts and kinesiology credentials. Once again, he reworked his goals and applied to business school, winning a scholarship that would pay all of his expenses at a school of the government's choosing.

"I was assigned to Chapel Hill," Hoffmann said. "I had to look it up on a map."

Now Eli Lilly's president for Latin American markets, Hoffmann, 42, finds his way back to Kenan-Flagler regularly from different parts of the world to recruit new MBAs.

"When I look at the quality of resumes today, I'm not sure I'd want to compete," he said. "Students have international work experience and speak multiple languages."

When Hoffmann began his business studies in 1985, he was one of only a handful of international students among the 180-member class. His liberal arts background didn't prepare him for economics and accounting, but he could write well. The School's atmosphere fostered cooperation and teamwork. Students contributed according to their strengths, a success strategy he later applied at Eli Lilly.

"My first year of business school was incredibly tough," he said. "I averaged four hours of sleep a night. I survived because I was not afraid to ask for help."

In the MBA Program, all his talents came together to make him the darling of the recruiting circuit. A European who also understood American culture, a liberal arts graduate who could write as clearly as he planned strategy, a disciplined athlete who strapped on a backpack to follow an adventuresome, entrepreneurial spirit, he was a hot commodity for multinational corporations.

"I was away so much on interviews, my attendance suffered," he said. "Some of my professors were irritated."

Eli Lilly, the multinational pharmaceutical giant, won out. In 1987, Hoffmann packed up his brand new MBA, kissed goodbye Ronda, the Carolina grad who would become his wife, and moved to Minneapolis to work as a sales rep.

"Eli Lilly hired me for a career, not to fill a job opening," he said.

Unlike risk-averse European companies, American companies are more apt to throw employees into the business waters in a sink-or-swim approach, Hoffmann said. The potential exists to rise quickly to the top rather than waiting to be promoted through seniority as happens in many European organizations. On the downside, Hoffmann said, "You might drown."

Eli Lilly offered the former Olympiad an ocean of opportunity to swim, throwing him lifelines along with promotions to new challenges. Hoffmann moved from sales to marketing in the United States just as Lilly launched Prozac. In 1992, he and Ronda married, his most successful career move, he said, because of her flexibility. Over the next several years, he took on marketing and sales management positions in different European and African countries.

While living in South Africa during its transition from apartheid to Nelson Mandela's government, Hoffmann fit Eli Lilly into the changes the country made in health care. He worked from a tabula rasa in 1996 as the general manager for sub-Saharan Africa, virgin territory as a pharmaceuticals market.

"That was an incredible entrepreneurial opportunity," he said. "I had to figure out how to hang out Eli Lilly's shingle."

In 2000, Hoffmann was made president of Eli Lilly Interamerica, a $500 million revenue contributor that stretches from the Caribbean to Mexico and through the southern tip of South America. He has responsibility for the entire spectrum of functions: medical, regulatory, finance, manufacturing and marketing. The globe-trotting Hoffmanns -whose three children were each born in a different country - settled in Indianapolis, Eli Lilly's headquarters. Hoffmann is away about 100 nights a year, although he occasionally takes one of his children along with him.

With so many Latin American countries in transition, Hoffmann has the chance to influence health-care practices as much as promoting products. Leaving such a footprint on a region takes time, learning the language and understanding the culture.

"Germanic/Latino communication skills can't be further apart," he said. "If I can't convince people, our business strategies mean nothing."