Looking out the window behind his desk in his fifth-floor Eagle Gate Building office, new Deseret Management Corp. president and chief executive officer Mark H. Willes can't help but come face-to-face with a reminder of his new employer, as "THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS" title across the fa?de of the facing Church Administration Building on the opposite side of Salt Lake City's South Temple Street dominates his view.
Deseret Management is the corporation owned by the Church — in fact, created in 1996 by Brother Willes' uncle, President Gordon B. Hinckley — that manages the bulk of the Church's for-profit businesses, such as the Deseret News, Deseret Book, Beneficial Financial Group, Bonneville International Corp. (including KSL-TV and Bonneville's radio stations), Hawaii Reserves Inc., Temple Square Hospitality Corp. and Zions Securities Corp.
Brother Willes knows his primary objective is to run them as effectively as possible "because the Church is invested in these businesses, and the Church — like anybody else — deserves to get a good return on its investment."
And yet, running Deseret Management will have a different dimension than some of his previous corporate leadership positions, such as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis; president of General Mills; and chairman of the board, president and chief executive officer of Times-Mirror Co., and publisher of the Los Angeles Times. In the past, he's worked for and reported to shareholders.
"Now I get to work for the benefit of the Church, so I can take whatever meager business skills I have and apply them to the benefit of the Church – and I really like that," he said. "Who else gets to report to a board made up of the First Presidency, three members of the Quorum of the Twelve and the Presiding Bishopric? That's like being in heaven.
"And if I don't do my job right," he quipped with his trademark grin and twinkle in his eye, "they'll probably send me to heaven."
Said President Thomas S. Monson at Brother Willes' appointment last month to replace the retiring Rodney H. Brady: "Mark brings a rich background of corporate experience and is well respected in the international business community. We look forward to working with him."
The 67-year-old Brother Willes assumed his new position March 2, planning to spend the first several weeks becoming better acquainted with all the involved businesses, anxious to add to his newspaper experience and background in book publishing with more understanding of the other industries involved with Deseret Management.
"I am an optimist by nature," he said. "So the challenge for me is to maintain my optimism while getting immersed in reality and figure out how to do it."
Brother Willes' Church leadership experience include serving as a stake president in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and president of the Hawaii Honolulu Mission.
He points to the Church's current development project in downtown Salt Lake City — the City Creek Center project with extensive retail, office and residential expansion spread over a two-plus-block area — as a pattern for Deseret Management Corp. to follow.
"You can clearly see that the Church made a decision — one that most cities would drool to have others make for them — to invest very heavily in the downtown area in order to make sure that anybody who comes to the headquarters city sees a city that is vital and growing and wonderful in every respect," he said.
Deseret Management Corp.'s business should have a similar impact, he added. "The challenge is to figure out how to manage those businesses in the most effective way but also in a way that reflects appropriately on the Church and on the city."
His goal for Deseret Management over the next decade is to realize an adage borrowed from his father, Joseph S. Willes, with Brother Willes' eyes getting misty and his voice cracking as he recalled his father's words.
"He said he would be happy at the end of the day if he had added to the sum of goodness in the world. That's not a bad thing to try to do," said Brother Willes. "Ten years from now, if we will have added to the sum of goodness in the world, we will have done something right."
