Calvin Darden: Biography from Answers.com Mobile

Calvin Darden

vice president (organization)

Personal Information

Born on February 5, 1950 in Buffalo, NY; married Patricia Gail Ellis, August 21, 1971; children: Ramarro, Tami, Lorielle.
Education: Canisius College, B.S., 1972; participated in Executive Development Consortium at Emory University, 1997.
Memberships: African American Unity Centers president, Atlanta chapter, 1996-; National Urban League, board of directors, 1997-; board member, 100 Black Men of Metro Atlanta; deacon of Deliverance Temple of Atlanta; board of directors, National Urban League Black Executive Exchange Program.

Career

Began career at United Parcel Service center in Buffalo, NY, unloading trucks; became customer service supervisor, January 1974; advanced through management ranks to become district manager for North New Jersey, 1984-86, district manager for Metro Jersey, 1986-91, district manager for Metro District of Columbia, 1991-93, vice president for Pacific region, 1993-95, vice president and corporate strategic quality coordinator, 1995-97, senior vice president of operations, 1997-.

Life's Work

Calvin Darden is a senior executive with United Parcel Service (UPS), the largest express and package carrier in the world. As senior vice president of the company's U.S. operations, Darden manages a team of 320,000 UPS employees who pick up, sort, and deliver over 13.5 million packages daily. The division brings in $28 billion in company revenues annually, which helped place Darden at No. 8 on Fortune magazine's "50 Most Powerful Black Executives" list. Yet Darden also works overtime to ensure that students and teens from at-risk communities understand the opportunities that the corporate world can offer. He belongs to the Atlanta chapter of the National Urban League, and to an outreach organization called 100 Black Men of Metro Atlanta.

Born in Buffalo, New York, in 1950, Darden attended a local Jesuit school, Canisius College, where he studied business management. "I think I was only one of nine minority students there," he recalled in an interview with Canisius College Magazine writer Audrey R. Browka. He enjoyed the rigors of the Jesuit teaching style, however, and felt that it prepared him well for his career. Canisius' teachers and professors, he remembered, "taught as if you had only one class to attend in your lifetime--and that was theirs! ... I learned a lot about life and the way things should be because of the way Canisius was structured."

Darden married just before the start of his senior year at Canisius and, to make ends meet, took a part-time job unloading trucks at the local UPS hub. After taxes, his paycheck was "$36 a week. That was our grocery money," he told Browka. Yet Darden also recognized UPS as a good company at which to build a career, and stayed on after his 1972 graduation from Canisius. In January of 1974, he was promoted to customer service supervisor, and went on to hold several other management posts over the next decade. "I learned very quickly that one of the most important aspects of being a good manager is being able to motivate people," he told Browka in the Canisius College Magazine article. "You can't motivate people with a 2 x 4."

With his wife, Patricia, Darden had become a parent of three, and the family moved often as he was transferred to various district manager posts in New Jersey and the District of Columbia. In 1993, he was made UPS's vice president for the Pacific region, and two years later he became the company's first-ever corporate strategic quality coordinator. After becoming senior vice president of operations in 1997, Darden became responsible for five U.S. regions and was given a seat on the company's management board as well. In 2000 he became head of all U.S. operations.

Darden has a perfect attendance record in his career at UPS, having never missed a single day of work. He also works long hours, and credits his willingness to move as part of the reason for his success. "If I'd insisted on staying in Buffalo, I'd probably still be driving a package car," a Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News report from Dave Hirschman quoted him as saying. In Atlanta, where he and his wife have lived for several years, Darden is active in several church and community organizations. He sits on the board of the National Urban League, and helps run the National Urban League Black Executive Exchange Program. At one of this group's events, he spoke before an audience of students at Georgia's Fort Valley State University, a historically black school. He stressed the need for new graduates to be willing to take entry-level jobs. "People graduating today think they should start as CEOs," Hirschman quoted him as saying in the Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News article. "They say, 'I didn't go to school for four years to drive a truck.' My response to that is, 'Have a nice life.' At UPS, delivering packages is a badge of honor."

In an article he wrote for Nashville's Tennessean newspaper, Darden delved deeper into the matter, pointing out that projected retirement statistics for the baby-boom generation would mean a labor shortage--but also increased opportunities for blacks and Hispanics in management positions. "Minorities should prepare themselves for the challenge.... Many leadership roles will open up. The opportunities may be easy to see, but they will not be easy to grasp," Darden wrote. "To prepare oneself for leadership only to be relegated to less influential jobs may be the ultimate frustration."

Darden carried the Olympic torch for part of the route on the way to the opening ceremonies at the 2000 Summer Games in Sydney, Australia. It was an honor that came because of UPS's sponsorship deal with the Olympics, but Darden's record of community service made him an ideal torch-bearer. As a board member of 100 Black Men of Metro Atlanta, he and other black executives from the area regularly meet with at-risk teens. "You blow all the smoke away and you tell them what to expect," he explained about his work with the group in the interview with Browka. "For example, I talk to students about the importance of coming to school every day. I talk to them about the importance of taking the proper courses at school. I talk to young men about not getting into trouble with the law."