Holland, Robert Jr. 1940—

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Robert Holland, Jr. 1940—

Business executive

In June of 1994 famed ice cream purveyors Ben & Jerry launched a contest to replace retiring chief executive Ben (Bennett R. Cohen). Their “Yo! I’m Your C.E.O.” contest asked competitors to convince them why they— the competitors—should personally replace Cohen in one hundred words or less. It caused a media brouhaha, and when the dust had settled, Robert Holland, Jr., was the winner and new chief executive of Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Ice Cream, Inc.

Bob Holland could never have guessed that his path would lead down this rocky road. But none of his career moves have been planned much in advance. Holland was born in Michigan in 1940 and raised in the small college town of Albion, the third of five children. Neither of his parents were formally educated, but they insisted that all of their children get a good education. To Mark Lowery of Black Enterprise Holland reminisced, “My dad knew more about the law than I’m sure most lawyers know.”

Holland’s father, an Albion city councilman, made his living in a foundry. While Holland was still young his father contracted tuberculosis and died. “Essentially, I was the man of the house,” Holland told Lowery. “My mother was our rock. “Holland went on to complete the education so dear to his parents. He attended Union College in Schenectady, New York, where he earned a bachelor of science degree in mechanical engineering. He told Lowery, “I got on the bus to go to Union College [a 26-hour ride]. It was the first time I’d been out of Michigan. That was not the last blind journey I would take, but the first of many.”

From there Holland went on to Manhattan’s Bernard Baruch Graduate School, receiving a masters of business administration in international marketing. Although his father was not there for moral support, “There were a lot of people who felt they were responsible for you,” he explained. “That helped me to keep going.”

Corporate Climb

In 1968, after working as an engineer and sales manager for Mobil Oil Co., Holland took a job with the New York-based consulting firm McKinsey & Co. As an

At a Glance…

Born m April, 1940, in Michigan; son of Robert (a foundry worker) Holland, Sr.; wife’s name, Barbara; children: Robb, Kheri, Jackie. Education: B.S. in mechanical engineering, Un ion Col lege, c. 1961 ; M.8 A in international marketing, Bernard Baruch Graduate School, c. 1963.

Engineer and sales manager, Mobil Oil Co., until 1968; associate, then partner, McKinsey & Co. (marketing consultants), 1968–81; chief executive officer, City Marketing, 1981–87; chairman, Gilreath Manufacturing, Inc., 1987–91; owner and chief executive officer, Rokher-j Ine, 1991–94; president and chief executive officer, Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Ice Cream, Ine, 1994— . Chairman of board of trustees, Spelman College; member of board of directors, Harlem Junior Tennis Program and UNC Ventures; trustee, Atlanta Un iversity Center.

Addresses: Office—Ben & Jerry’s, P.O. Box 240, Water-bury, VT 05676.

associate and partner until 1981 he managed projects for global marketing accounts. During that time he became known throughout the corporate world as a “turnaround expert,” someone who helps struggling companies return from the brink of bankruptcy and flourish. Holland spent two years in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and worked in England, Mexico, and Brazil as well.

Then it was back to Michigan—Detroit this time—as CEO of City Marketing, a beverage distributor. From 1987 to 1991, Holland acted as chairman of Gilreath Manufacturing, Inc., in Howell, Michigan, where he performed his turnaround magic once again, helping to rescue this maker of plastic injection molds. In 1991 Holland started his own company, Rokher-J Inc., in White Plains, New York, where he waged leveraged buyouts of service-oriented companies, buying them when they weren’t doing well, turning them around, and selling them.

It was during his tenure at the helm of Rokher-J that “headhunters”—in this case the blue-chip New York recruiting firm Russell Reynolds Associates—discovered him and referred him to Ben & Jerry’s. In truth, Holland had not actually entered the company’s “We Want You To Be Our CEO” contest, though nearly 22,500 others did when the contest was announced on June 13, 1994. The company insisted the competition was not a publicity stunt, but rather, as Ben & Jerry’s director of investor relations told Joseph Pereira and Joann S. Lublin in the Wall Street Journal, “a way to cast a wide net and not exclude anyone. If someone chose to call that a marketing gimmick, so be it. It was in the spirit of fun that Ben & Jerry’s has always been known for.”

Indeed, the often wacky ice cream company has become famous not only for their luscious and decadent desserts, but for their sense of whimsy. Such evocative ice cream names as Cherry Garcia (named for Jerry Garcia, leader of the legendary band the Grateful Dead), Wavy Gravy (named for another late 1960s San Francisco music scenester), and Chunky Monkey helped earn Ben & Jerry’s their fun-loving reputation. The company— represented in their logo by friendly-looking Holstein cows and the smiling faces of the founders—was established in 1978 when ex-hippies Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield set up shop in Waterbury, Vermont. Over time it grew to be the biggest vendor of premium ice cream, reaching profits in the $100 millions. And Ben & Jerry’s is considered a leader in the trend toward socially responsible business practices; among their pet causes are saving the rain forests and aiding the homeless.

Protested Racism

“After the first five minutes of a 10-minute conversation,” remembered Russell Rynolds managing director Melanie Kusin in Black Enterprise, “I walked out to my secretary and said ’I think I just talked to a successful candidate.’ He has perspective and an extremely high intellect.” Ben & Jerry’s search committee recommended Holland and another finalist once they had interviewed the four leading contenders. It was only after he was selected as a finalist that Holland was asked to write the essay. Being a poet hobbyist, he chose to submit his entry in verse form. Getting around the one hundred word requirement, Holland suggested that his poem was “only 100 words before translation from the language of Chunky Mandarin Orange with natural wild Brazil nuts.”

In his poem, entitled “Time, Values and Ice Cream,” Holland extols America, yet bitterly remembers being barred from his hometown ice cream shop as a youth due to the color of his skin: “Yet, some nostalgia stayed ’yond one’s grasp/like Sullivan’s,/the ice cream place on Main—Swivel stools, cozy booths, and/sweet, sweet smells with no sitting place for all of some of us. “Holland pointed out to Black Enterprise ’s Lowery, “You have to realize that Michigan was the only state north of the Mason Dixon line that voted for [former Alabama Gov. George] Wallace when he ran for president on a “segregation now and forever’ platform. So that’s the environment I grew up in, and that was not an incident; it was a continuum.”

To this day Holland will not eat a banana split sundae. Because African Americans were not allowed to sit in Sullivan’s dining room, they were not able to partake of the banana splits that were only served there—they were limited to a cone to go. “The banana split was the thing to have,” Holland told Mark Mayes in the Battle Creek Enquirer.”It was a measure of something, and we never got one.”

Nor will Holland shop at Woolworth’s, because they did not sell to blacks in his youth. And he will never erase the pain of seeing a cross burn on the lawn of his family’s home in the early 1940s after his parents purchased a house on an all-white street. “My dad was angry,” Holland recalled to Mayes. “He wasn’t nervous or scared by all this. He was angry that we had to see this. “He told Mayes that he thought he had been strong enough to keep the racism from dragging him down, but remarked, “The probability of leaving all these psychological scars and social scars and physiological scars behind to sort of participate in the American Dream, that’s the hopelessness. I think the consequences of much of this prejudice and racism is enormous. It’s mindbending.”

Sources suggest that Holland, an ardent ice cream fan, prevailed over a co-finalist in the Ben & Jerry’s race due to the other candidate’s preference for frozen yogurt. Apparently, in the course of interviews with Ben Cohen, Holland impressed the ice creamery’s founder with his capacity for consuming the sweet stuff. On the record, of course, Ben & Jerry’s board offered other reasons for Holland’s hiring. Several sources cited the news conference in which Cohen said, “Bob Holland is the board’s unanimous choice to be our new CEO. We were very impressed, not only with Bob’s operational expertise, but with his social commitment.” During that conference, Cohen performed a ceremony wherein he removed a hat shaped like a Ben & Jerry’s pint of ice cream from his head and placed it on Holland’s.

Shares Company’s Commitment

Holland’s commitment to social causes has been expressed in numerous activities, including a program to help 30 struggling Detroit students finish high school and enroll in college. His credentials in this area also include serving as chairman of the board of trustees of Atlanta’s Spelman College; additionally, he is a trustee of Atlanta University Center and sits on the board of the Harlem Junior Tennis Program and UNC Ventures, a Boston-based minority venture capital fund. “In terms of character and integrity, Bob seems like the right person for the job at the right time, “Cohen told the Wall Street Journal.”If you can imagine a company that cares about people going to bed hungry and wants to do something about it—that’s what I hope will be the epitaph for my whole life,” Holland told Lowery, “to be part of a company which has that as a part of their credo—this is [like having] died and gone to heaven.”

Holland would have his work cut out for him at Ben & Jerry’s, however. Though when he began at the company it was enjoying a 40 percent share of the premium ice cream business, its executives were also reporting a five percent decline in sales and a major quarterly loss, their first since the company’s shares went public in 1984. Much of the loss was due to delays in opening a state-of-the-art ice cream production facility near the home office; computer problems had kept its unveiling months behind schedule. Losses were also attributed to consumers abandoning high-fat luxury food items for health reasons in the 1990s.

Analysts were mixed in their assessment of how Holland would fare at his new post. Many cited his history as “turnaround king,” but some, like Lewis Alton, a securities analyst, told Glenn Collins in the New York Times, “His résumé doesn’t come across to me as that of a marketing genius with a lot of experience with consumer products. How do you transfer experience from plastic injection molding to Ben & Jerry’s?” Alton also voiced reservations to Jesus Sanches in theLos Angles Times, venturing, “With people concerned in this country over fat, it’s hard to know what sort of future exists for high-butter-fat-content ice cream.” But Cohen told Pereira and Lublin in the Wall Street Journal ”Bob’s key talents and abilities aren’t related to making ice cream but more to leadership, management and strategic planning.”

As to Holland’s own take on the issue, he told Pereira and Lublin, “The biggest challenge for Ben & Jerry’s is to get growth started up again.” Ben & Jerry’s sells primarily through grocery stores but has 100 “scoop shops” in the U.S., Canada, Israel, and Russia. Holland told Lowery that “half of the ice cream-eating world doesn’t even know Ben & Jerry’s exists, so it’s an incredibly fertile opportunity to expand to the overseas market. “Holland also noted that Ben & Jerry’s was not in “a turnaround situation,” informing the Wall Street Journal, “I’m approaching my job with this attitude. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

Though Holland is the first African-American to be recruited as CEO of a majority-owned franchise company, he denied that there is a racial significance to his appointment. He did concede, nonetheless, that it was a nice sign of changing trends, stating his belief that in 20 years the color of a newly appointed CEO will not inspire comment. For now, though, the progress he sees toward equality in corporate America is too slow. While three other choice executive positions were filled by blacks around the same time that Holland took on his new role, he noted to the Wall Street Journal that the percentage of black executives in top corporate positions is “not even close” to matching blacks’ representation in the population, which is about 13 percent.

One can only hope that this situation will be remedied through the efforts of people like Bob Holland, people who make strong social commitments and give back to the community in the best way they can: with their time and their love. Perhaps Holland has been partly inspired to continue his efforts toward social equality because of his strong connections to the community that nurtured him, despite its shortcomings “He’s still down-to-earth Bobby Holland,” a childhood friend told the Battle Creek Enquirer.”He never forgets home. He never forgets anyone he grew up with.”