Joe Galli
By John Manuel

alk into your neighborhood Wal-Mart, Lowe's or Home Depot, and you will see Newell Rubbermaid CEO Joe Galli's (BSBA '80) handiwork front and center.

Rubbermaid products - plastic storage boxes, file crates, stepladders and tool towers - dominate the end displays on many aisles. Other company product lines jump out as well - Sharpie pens, Vice-grip pliers and Roughneck totes. Prior to Galli's becoming president and CEO of Newell Rubbermaid, many of these products didn't exist. Those that did were often buried in the back aisles, overshadowed by their competitors.

Galli's career to date has followed the classic "log cabin to White House" theme. Born to a man with an eighth grade education, Galli spent summers in high school working in his father's scrap yard, learning about marketing, negotiating and backbreaking work.

At UNC, Galli was named co-captain of the wrestling team and ACC champion his senior year. After graduating, he went to work as a sales representative for Black & Decker, rising to president of the U.S. Power Tools Group at the age of 35. After a brief stint as COO of Amazon.com, Galli signed on with Newell Rubbermaid in 2001 "because they made products I believed in."

To his dismay, Galli discovered that the company he inherited was in serious disarray. Newell Rubbermaid had spent little on new product development and national advertising. The 26 different business units rarely talked to each other.

Galli responded by assembling an "All Star Team" from among his trusted managers at Black & Decker. He demanded that Newell Rubbermaid become a "product development machine," to which employees responded by launching more new products in 2002 than the previous three years combined. Profits jumped 31 percent last year and have met or exceeded Wall Street expectations for six straight quarters.

"We want Rubbermaid to be one of the most powerful brand names on earth, in a league with Nike and Coca-Cola," Galli says.

By his own account, Galli's proudest achievements are two initiatives centered around finding and developing leaders for the company. Through the Phoenix program, Galli has hired more than a thousand college grads, 19 of whom went to UNC and another 10 who will graduate in May, to work with retailers to better market Newell Rubbermaid products.

"We love recruiting at UNC," Galli says. "The students here have a great can-do attitude."

The Phoenicians are passionately dedicated to Galli's cause and have generated 20 percent-plus sales increases in their target stores.

"These are the future leaders of our company," Galli says. "We hire from wherever we find the talent and let them rise according to their merits."

"Breakthrough Leadership" is Galli's vehicle to teach senior executives how to improve their leadership skills. The training sessions, to which Galli devotes one-fourth of his professional time, are "like religious transformations," Galli says. "Our people come through these sessions with skills they can immediately implement.

"Development of leadership skills is one of the most overlooked aspects of business today. It's not just a need among new hires. Senior executives need it as well."