“Challenging convention and preserving your entrepreneurial culture” lessons learned by Nextel’s Tim Donahue.  Tim will share those lessons with the Entrepreneur’s Association at the opening dinner event of the year on October 7^th at Executive Caterers at Landerhaven.  The cocktail hour is 5:30 until 6:30 p.m. followed by dinner and the presentation.  Guest fees for non-members are $65.00 each and Corporate Tables are available at $480.00.

 

Donahue is a 1971 graduate of John Carroll University with a BA in English Literature.  He began his communications career with AT&T Wireless Services (formerly McCaw Cellular Communications) and was named president of the Paging Division in 1986.  He became McCaw Cellular’s president for the US central region in 1989. Before joining Nextel, Donahue served as AT&T Wireless Service northeast regional president from 1991 until 1996.  He began his career with Nextel in January 1996 as President and Chief Operating Officer and since August 1999 he has served as President and Chief Executive Officer for Nextel Communications.

 

Donahue helped build Nextel into a Fortune 200 company, by significantly reducing debt and more than tripling subscriber base. He was named the 2003 Entrepreneur of the Year Award Winner in the Networking and Communications category and Ernst & Young’s 2003 Master Entrepreneur Of The Year award winner in the Greater Washington D.C. area.  The award announcement mentioned, “This customer-centric approach is something Donahue focused on early in his career when he owned and operated Ben Franklin craft stores.  In the cutthroat retail business, customer satisfaction was critical and something on which Donahue prided himself.  That same desire to satisfy the customer is a distint advantage for Nextel.  From the beginning, it was a different kind of cellular company, competing on the strength of its product rather than the price of its service.” Mr. Donahue’s mantra of “Be first, Be better, Be different” has helped position Nextel as an award-winning industry leader.

 

In the June 2003 Business Week article stated: “Nextel Communications has always preferred to turn left while the rest of the industry marched right.  As other cellular carriers chased the booming consumer market over the last few years, the Reston outfit stuck to selling its unique walkie-talkie-like service to business users in industries such as trucking and construction.  Now that stubborn streak is paying off.  While other carriers are killing each other with price wars in the consumer arena, Nextel reigns in its own cozy niche, scoring the industry’s highest average revenue per subscriber and most loyal group of customers.  Indeed, the wireless-service provider grabbed the coveted top spot in this year’s Business Week Info Tech 100 ranking.  “A long time ago, we staked out our ground and didn’t get suckered into less-profitable areas of business,” says CEO Tim Donahue.  “On Wall Street, Nextel’s insistence on bottom-line results is a hit.”

 

In 2001, Donahue was named to board of directors of Kodak, a venerable company which is trying desperately to respond to the massive shift from film to digital photography.  In 2003 Donahue and Nextel signed a 10-year, $750-million sponsorship deal with NASCAR, replacing Winston cigareetes as the title sponsor of its elite racing events.

 

Through a recent gift to the university, Nextel and Tim Donahue created one of the region’s first all-wireless campuses at JCU.