Please join us for our 51st Annual Distinguished Leadership Dinner honoring John W. Rowe, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Exelon Corporation. This black tie dinner, sponsored by the HBSCC Charitable Fund, will take place on Friday, November 5, 2010.
Come celebrate an exemplary Chicago leader, and help support the goals and projects of the Harvard Business School Club of Chicago Charitable Fund.
About Our Honoree
John Rowe is the chairman and chief executive officer of Chicago-based Exelon Corporation, one of the nation’s largest electric utilities. Its retail affiliates serve 5.4 million customers in Illinois and Pennsylvania, and its generation affiliate operates the largest fleet of nuclear power plants in the nation.
Industry Leadership
Rowe is the senior chief executive in the utility industry, having served in that capacity since 1984. Rowe has led Exelon since its formation through the merger of PECO Energy with the parent of Commonwealth Edison in 2000. Rowe previously held chief executive officer positions at the New England Electric System and Central Maine Power Company, served as general counsel of Consolidated Rail Corporation, and was a partner in the law firm of Isham, Lincoln & Beale. Rowe is a past chairman of the Nuclear Energy Institute and the Edison Electric Institute. He is co-chairman of the National Commission on Energy Policy, an industry and environmental organization dealing with climate change, and serves on the Secretary of Energy’s Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future, a panel to provide recommendations on managing used nuclear fuel and waste. He is the lead independent director of the Northern Trust Company and a member of the board of directors of Sunoco. In both 2008 and 2009, Institutional Investor named Rowe the best electric utilities CEO in America.
Civic and Charitable Commitment
Rowe is committed to a wide variety of civic and charitable activities, with a focus on education, science, history and diversity. He serves as chairman of the Illinois Institute of Technology and president of the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation. He is a former chairman of the Commercial Club of Chicago and the Chicago History Museum. He is a member of the boards of the Field Museum, the Illinois Holocaust Museum, and the Morgridge Institute for Research. Along with his wife Jeanne and son William, he established the Rowe Family Charitable Trust. The Rowes and the Family Trust have founded the Rowe Professorship of Architecture and the Rowe Family Chair in Sustainable Energy at IIT, the Rowe Professorship of Byzantine History and the Rowe Family Professorship in Greek History at the University of Wisconsin, the Rowe Professorship in Virology at the Morgridge Institute for Research, the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, and the Curator of Evolutionary Biology at the Field Museum. The Trust also co-founded the Rowe-Clark Math and ScienceAcademyChicago’s West Humboldt Park neighborhood. The Rowes serve as patrons of the Pope John Paul II parochial school on Chicago’s southwest side and founders of the Rowe Elementary School. Rowe is also chairman of the Renaissance Schools Fund, a nonprofit organization formed to fund charter schools in the City of Chicago, and serves on the board of the Northwestern Settlement House, an educational and social services organization serving Chicago’s West Side.
Education & Family
Rowe holds undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Wisconsin, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and the Order of the Coif. He has also received that university’s Distinguished Alumni Award. He attended the Harvard AMP program in 1983 and holds honorary doctorates from the University of Wisconsin, DePaul University, Illinois Institute of Technology, Drexel University, University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth, Bryant College and Thomas College.
Rowe and his wife Jeanne reside in Chicago, as does their son William, an associate with the law firm of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher and Flom.
