An Executive MBA immersion in Rwanda and Uganda changed the way Adam Williams saw the world
The Daniels College of Business Executive MBA’s two-week global immersion is designed to change people forever.
Adam Williams (MBA 2023) is proof that it works.
Standing in a Rwandan village school at lunchtime, hard-boiled eggs in hand, Williams passed out a daily ration of protein and realized his life would never be the same.
“That changed me and how I think about what I want to do in my time on this planet with my resources,” Williams said. From this point on, anything he did in business had to have a mission. And that mission had to be about serving people.
Not long after he returned home from his east African excursion—a fortnight filled with visits to local businesses, cultural experiences and a feasibility study for a business idea—the mission itself came into focus.
It happened in a small office, face to face with a teary-eyed, lifelong CEO Williams had been working for.
“He said, ‘I thought this was going to be easier for me to step away from, but I can’t do it,’” Williams recalled. There had to be a way to push the company forward, he thought, while showing care for its long-standing infrastructure.
“How do we help founders retire, give them a fair deal, help that succession process be hopefully easy for them, where it’s fair for them financially and fair for us so the company can thrive?” Williams said. “But also, how do we make it a people-first business, give them the skills and frameworks and practices that a founder-led company doesn’t know about?”
The answer was William Dean Co., a mergers and acquisitions company inspired by Williams’s EMBA education.
Adam Williams
Longing for leadership
Even before he joined EMBA Cohort 80, Williams aspired to do “more.” It didn’t take long for the teenager to realize that his fresh-out-of-high-school mining job in a quarry was just a starting point.
He wanted to grow, do, expand. Williams didn’t want to just build a product. He wanted to build the company.
His thirst for leadership skills led him up the org chart at HEI Civil and, eventually, into a University of Denver classroom.
The Denver Leadership Experience, a program through the Executive Education department, gave him a taste of what Daniels had to offer: holistic, hands-on, highly personalized training.
At a lunch session, Williams told his faculty leader that he wanted more. He applied to the Executive MBA program.
“The professors lured me in,” Williams said. “I was impressed that they were all professionals who had gone out and lived in the world they were teaching about. They were very caring and generous with their time, and all really wanted to connect with people. When I got into the EMBA program, that was even further verified.”
He felt at home almost immediately. The small, tight-knit cohort was ready to work hard and collaborate. The lens through which Williams viewed the world broadened.
“Once you start [having] conversations with classmates, you instantly start to apply a wider range of perspectives to different challenges,” he said, such as the EMBA’s social impact project and other consulting assignments. “It’s one thing to read a book about leadership and how you hold yourself in executive presence. It’s another thing to give a pitch to the board of directors and stand in the room and know what that pressure feels like.”
The global trip to Rwanda and Uganda proved to be the ultimate test—and the perfect capstone to a rigorous program. Williams walked away with the confidence to navigate stressful situations in an unfamiliar environment.
Perhaps more than anything, he learned to look not for the easiest solution but the most effective solution. Buying eggs for a low-resourced school was a short-term fix, but it didn’t address a shortage in perpetuity.
“How do we go teach people how to do things?” he reflected, translating the experience to his professional environment. “Can we teach people how to run companies? Give them skills that help with generational change?”
Two weeks in Rwanda and Uganda changed Adam Williams’s sense of purpose. (Photo by Adam Williams)
Making a Meaningful Impact
William Dean’s goal is not to flip companies the companies it purchases.
In a perfect world, “I would love to go in, buy a company that’s been around for 50 years, install a new general manager, give them some equity in the company so they feel like they have ownership over it, and allow them to grow it for the next 20 years,” Williams said. “Our mission is to have a meaningful impact on the world—to help older business owners retire, to help the younger generation step up and grow.”
Right now, Williams is zeroed in on the intermountain west region. He’s aiming to acquire 1-2 companies per year until 2030—keeping his operation relatively small, so he can be on a first-name basis with employees.
There’s one other thing baked into his company’s operating agreements: A percentage of net profit will be dedicated to a new foundation, supporting nonprofits or NGOs in eastern, sub-Saharan Africa.
“It left a huge impact on me and I want to give back to them,” Williams said.
“Daniels, as much as it helps you with technical skills, helps you understand who you are and what you want out of life,” he added. “You walk away with a deeper understanding of how you want to contribute to the world. And not just in a financial way.
“How do you want to make a difference and make an impact?”