Howard L. Lance, the 2024 recipient of the Business Leadership Award — the Daniels School’s highest honor — credits Purdue’s executive education program for jumpstarting his career.
“I had been working for Emerson Electric for two years when I came to the Purdue executive master’s program,” he says. “I was sponsored by my company CEO, who was a Purdue grad, and had told him that while an undergrad engineer, I really felt like I needed to learn a lot more about business and finance.”
Lance continued to work during the program, traveling to campus once each semester for a two-week residency, but much of the coursework was completed online. “Those were the early days of personal computing with Macintosh and dial-up modems,” he says. “It’s amazing how far technology has come since then.”
For Lance, the highlight of the program was its cohort-based nature.
“We had 26 people in our in our cohort,” he says. “And you were then organized for study groups in teams of four or five people from different disciplines. So we had an operations person, we had an HR person, we had IT/engineering person, etc. We would attack case studies as a group, which I thought was brilliant because it was as close as you could get to how you do it in a real business setting with cross-functional teams from various departments.”
Upon completing the program, Lance, who earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Industrial Engineering at Bradley University, was quickly promoted. “I had been with the company for four years when I finished and stayed there for almost 18 years, so it was definitely a launching point for my career,” he says.
And what a career it’s been. During his time at Emerson Electric, Lance served as executive vice president of its Electronics and Telecom businesses, chief executive officer of its Astec PLC-listed subsidiary based in Hong Kong, group president of its Climate Technologies businesses, and president of its Copeland Refrigeration business.
After leaving Emerson, Lance was co-president of NCR Corporation and chief operating officer of its Retail and Financial Group from 2001-2002. He next served as board chairman, president, and chief executive officer of Harris Corporation, a leading global provider of communications and technology solutions to government, defense, and commercial markets, from 2003-2011.
“The executive program helped me to be much more rounded in my understanding of technology and business concepts. It was the grounding I needed and gave me a springboard to use and to be ready for other opportunities that came down the line.”
Lance was executive advisor-private equity at the Blackstone Group from 2012-2016, then joined Maxar Technologies, a leading provider of space technology solutions, as chief executive officer from 2016-2019. He founded Lance Advisors LLC in 2019, advising institutional investors and private equity clients regarding investments in aerospace, defense, and industrial markets. He now serves as chairperson of one public and two private company boards.
Lance’s public service includes an appointment to the National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee by President George W. Bush. He has also served on non-profit boards as trustee,including the Florida Institute of Technology, the Aerospace Industries Association, and the United Way of Brevard County, Florida, where he served as board chair and campaign chair.
“My view is that life and your career are a combination of being prepared but also being willing,” he says. “For me, the executive program helped me to be much more rounded in my understanding of technology and business concepts. It was the grounding I needed and gave me a springboard to use and to be ready for other opportunities that came down the line.”
Lance believes in the notion of ‘leading from the front.’ “Roll your sleeves up, get engaged, and build followership by digging into the business and the problems your team sees,” he says. “When you do that, it sets a powerful example.”
Leadership is also about decision making, Lance says. “One thing that distinguishes great leaders is the personal courage, ability and conviction to make tough decisions without all the information you wish you had,” he says. “Great leaders are right a lot more often than they’re wrong, and being able to make those decisions is a key element to success.”
Today, Lance is focused on giving back. “I think it’s important for alumni to recognize that while they may have achieved important milestones in their lives, it’s all been enabled by the contributions of other people, whether it’s your parents early in your life, whether it’s professors in undergrad or graduate school, or whether it’s mentors that you had along the way,” he says.
“It’s a great honor to be recognized with the Business Leadership Award, but it’s even a greater honor to hope that something you’ve done will influence someone else in a positive way, whether it’s my children or nieces and nephews or my grandson or other students or potential students,” Lance says. “To me, that’s a great part of the journey and part of the fulfillment.”
