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Summer 2007                                                                  Back to Spotlight home page

Alumni profile - Dr. Stuart Cram

To say Dr. Stuart Cram (BA 1961) thrives on challenges is a bit misleading. Try this on for size: When the European Union banned Turkey’s food exports, Cram took a team to Turkey and fixed the problem. When China’s food exports were declining, Cram went
to China and negotiated successfully between governments. When homeland security
erupted, Cram built a $100 million business unit in three years. When the Olympics or the Tour de France called for drug testing, Cram’s team never once had a false positive test.

As a former executive at Hewlett Packard and Agilent Technologies, Cram was in a position to act quickly, wrapping his mind around enormous problems and marshalling the resources to find solutions. “I had the confidence and support of the company (Hewlett Packard), and the opportunity to work with a lot of very talented people,” Cram said from his home in Danville, Calif.

When Cram left Hewlett Packard in 2005, it wasn’t exactly for retirement. He co-founded Cram Consulting Group International, hopping the globe and achieving multimillion dollar growth while spending a day per month in the office. Now Cram is further from retirement – he called back in the early summer to say he was just named the vice president of strategic marketing for ThermoFisher Scientific, the world’s largest analytical instrument company.

Cram, a past ESU Distinguished Alumnus whose father is the namesake of Cram Science Hall, earned his bachelor’s degree in chemistry at ESU. Master’s and doctoral degrees in chemistry led Cram into a career on the technical side, until a Hewlett Packard executive saw something else in him. He moved out of R&D and into business and marketing, under the guidance of strong mentors, a trait he remembered from his time at ESU. He credits ESU, in fact, with giving him the mindset to succeed.

“I would point to the whole culture of Emporia State, which I still think is unique relative to other colleges and universities, especially the individual attention given to students by faculty,” Cram said. “I’ve been to campuses, big and small, all over the world, and I still think ESU is unique. My time at Emporia gave me the flexibility and inspiration to go out there and make a career.”

Cram remembers his public-speaking course at ESU, taught by Tex Smiley. The valuable lesson of how to communicate in front of his peers was a breakthrough, and he still uses it in countries across the world. “That really has made a huge difference in my career, just being able to communicate with all types of people,” he said. His chemistry professor, Alfred Ericson, taught him to always think analytically. There was also his father, Winston Cram, who had high expectations for all his students. But even the elder Cram might not have foreseen such heights for his son.

“I couldn’t have ever dreamed it,” Stuart Cram said. “I’ve had a great career. I had an opportunity to do a lot of different things, a lot of once-in-a-lifetime opportunities.”

For a man of Cram’s skill, energy and vision, “once in a lifetime” seems to happen over and over again.

Last Updated April 17, 2008