{"id":3277,"date":"2019-12-05T12:06:37","date_gmt":"2019-12-05T17:06:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/?p=3277"},"modified":"2025-01-28T09:18:33","modified_gmt":"2025-01-28T14:18:33","slug":"the-gift-of-leadership","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/2019\/12\/the-gift-of-leadership\/","title":{"rendered":"The Gift of Leadership"},"content":{"rendered":"
Seton Hall\u2019s leadership development program gets a big boost from turnaround management pioneer Gerald P. Buccino \u201963.<\/div><\/div>\n

Gerald \u201cJerry\u201d Buccino \u201963 was in his sophomore year of high school when he marched into the vice principal\u2019s office and requested an appointment.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t something students normally did, but Buccino had important business to discuss. Every Friday night, his school held a dance with live music, and every week, the administrators booked a different band. Buccino had his own band at the time, and he had an idea.<\/p>\n

On the scheduled day and time, he showed up with an agreement he\u2019d drafted for his band to play at the dance every week. If the school agreed to hire them for the whole year, he\u2019d offer a 20 percent discount.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll never forget the look on his face,\u201d Buccino says, chuckling as he remembers that meeting with his vice principal. \u201cHe goes, \u2018Jerry, did you write this? It\u2019s unbelievable.\u2019 Then he calls in our principal and says, \u2018Look at this!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

And just like that, Buccino had closed his first business deal.<\/p>\n

Today Jerry Buccino is considered a visionary in the turnaround management industry, renowned for both his leadership acumen and his talent for transforming troubled companies into profitable enterprises. He\u2019s also a well-known name at Seton Hall: the donor behind the Stillman School of Business\u2019 Gerald P. Buccino \u201963 Center for Leadership Development, which has now expanded into the University-wide Buccino Leadership Institute.<\/p>\n

Established thanks to another gift from Buccino, the new four-year program combines leadership development with preparation in specific competencies across six schools and colleges at the University. \u201cIt\u2019s been my dream to take this campus-wide, because I never was a believer that leadership is only for the purview of business,\u201d he says. \u201cYou need leadership in every facet of life \u2014 in politics, in education, in medicine, in research. Even in your personal life.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLeaders create industry, they create technologies, they create great products,\u201d he continues. \u201cA lot of
\ninnovation comes directly from leaders who seek a better way to do things.\u201d<\/p>\n

But in spite of his early business prowess, Buccino insists he wasn\u2019t born a leader, just as no one is born a doctor or a teacher or a professor. He believes leadership is a skill that can be both taught and learned \u2014 and says he would have loved access to a program like the one he\u2019s helped to build at Seton Hall.<\/p>\n

Buccino came to the University in the late 1950s, fresh out of the military and working full time for General Motors. He graduated with a degree in business at 25 years old.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I look back on my career, everything I have today began at Seton Hall University,\u201d he says. \u201cI love Seton Hall and I love the opportunity it gave me.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the years following graduation, he worked his way up in the business world, taking on more leadership responsibilities with each role. Buccino says he spent his late 20s and early 30s learning to lead mostly by watching what the people around him did right \u2014 and also where they went wrong.<\/p>\n

\u201cLeadership is about doing, not talking,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s about passion and taking risks and not fearing failure, and it comes in all different packages and shapes. There are leaders who can get up and sound good but who
\nhave no substance. Then you can have a guy working in a garage who develops Microsoft.\u201d<\/p>\n

Buccino reconnected with Seton Hall in the early 1990s, about a decade after he\u2019d founded his turnaround firm, Buccino & Associates Inc. In 1996, he created an endowed scholarship for students in the Stillman School\u2019s Center for Leadership Studies. In addition to providing financial support, Buccino personally serves as a mentor to select recipients throughout their time at Seton Hall, and well beyond. He says alumni who are now in their late 30s and early 40s still call him up for career guidance or just to check in.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese young people have given me a real gift of having them in my life,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Growing up modestly in North Jersey, the son of a grocery store owner and a homemaker, Buccino says even he didn\u2019t foresee his evolution from confident teen musician to business luminary.<\/p>\n

\u201cI never imagined as a young boy that I would ever be in a position to do these things,\u201d he says of his continued support of Seton Hall. \u201cIt\u2019s been a wonderful journey. I pinch myself sometimes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Molly Petrilla is a freelance writer based in New Jersey.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Seton Hall\u2019s leadership development program gets a big boost from turnaround management pioneer Gerald P. Buccino \u201963. <\/p>\n

Continue ReadingThe Gift of Leadership<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":4613,"featured_media":3208,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[247,11,258,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-2019-2022","category-alumni","category-articles-2015-2019","category-leadership","entry"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4613"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3277"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3277\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3385,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3277\/revisions\/3385"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}