Harry S. Campbell: Practicing Get Real Leadership

Banking on KC

On this episode of Banking on KC, Harry S. Campbell, a business executive, speaker and author joins host Kelly Scanlon to discuss the keys to the three levels of Get Real Leadership: leading yourself, leading people and leading your business.

Harry S. Campbell is a senior executive with a strong record of success over three decades, including president for two Fortune 500 companies, co-owner of an award-winning small business and CEO/board member of an Internet start-up.

He has driven exceptional people and business results in organizations of 25 to 3,500 employees in a broad range of industries—from consumer-packaged goods to telecom to sports marketing to digital media. Harry is known as an identifier, a developer and a motivator of exceptional talent at all levels of the organization.

Campbell’s views on leadership and business management were forged at Procter & Gamble, where he worked in brand management on notable products such as Crest, Pepto-Bismol and Metamucil. While with P&G, Campbell was hand-picked to be a founding member of the P&G/Wal-Mart Customer Team based in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

In 1992, he moved from consumer-packaged goods to the telecom sector when he joined Sprint, where he served in several leadership roles before being appointed president of the multibillion dollar Consumer Long Distance unit in 2002. His final role with Sprint was leading the Emerging and Mid-Markets business unit.

From 2005-2009, Campbell led the Consumer Markets division at Embarq, a spin-off from Sprint, and now known as CenturyLink. As president of the Consumer Markets division, he was responsible for nearly half of Embarq's annual revenue and an organization of 3,000 employees. His group provided marketing, sales, service and operational support for a full line of communication and entertainment services to 4 million residential customers in 18 states.

Campbell’s other senior management experiences spanned two distinctly different small businesses. He was president/CEO (and member of the board) of uclick, a digital syndication company that packaged and distributed branded content, comics and word games on the Web. It represents more than 110 features such as Garfield, Dear Abby, FoxTrot and Doonesbury. He was also co-owner/EVP of a sports marketing agency recognized as the 1998 Business of the Year by the Kansas City Chamber of Commerce.

Campbell recently retired after five years as the CEO of Durrie Vision, a world-class refractive eye surgery center, to focus on maximizing his charitable donations via speaking and writing books, including “Get-Real Leadership,” “Get-Real Culture,” and “Get-Real Mindset.”

Campbell holds a bachelor's degree in East Asian history and economics from Vanderbilt University and an MBA with a concentration in marketing from Indiana University's Kelley Graduate School of Business.

He is active in several local charities and serves on the board of Head for the Cure, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to raising money to help cure brain cancer.

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