Lawrence Zicklin

The company was founded in the Depression, went public in 1999, and was acquired by Lehman Brothers in 2003. Along the way, it maintained its reputation for integrity as well as performance — something Zicklin attributes to the fact that the top managers kept their eyes continually on the future value of the firm. Since Zicklin has retired, he began a weekend seminar on business ethics for faculty at New York University and now often teaches there. And he has supported his undergraduate institution — Baruch College of the City University of New York (which named the Zicklin School of Business in his honor in 1997) — by helping to found the Robert Zicklin Center for Corporate Integrity at Wharton in 2000.