Executives head to OSU to share success stories during Spears School CEO Day

Monday, March 20, 2017

Successful business executives will be sharing their stories with Oklahoma State University students as part of the Spears School of Business’ CEO Day from 3:30-5 p.m. April 11 at the Little Theater in the Student Union.

The forum, “A Generation Empowered, Will Empower the World,” will feature Ban Nguyen, co-owner and CEO of Jimmy’s Egg; Brenda Rolls, president and CEO of Frontier Electronic Systems, and Matt Scovil, co-founder and CEO of Medefy. All three are OSU graduates (Nguyen 1984, Rolls 1984, Scovil 2004 and 2007).

CEO Day is hosted by the Spears School to bring successful business people to the Stillwater campus. Students can discover challenges and issues that business leaders face, understand how CEOs chart their career paths, discover characteristics they seek in managers, interact with successful executives, and learn about their decision processes and leadership styles.

“CEO Day is a great opportunity for students to hear directly from successful business leaders,” said Ken Eastman, dean of the Spears School. “This year, we are delighted to welcome back three of our own graduates as our speakers. It should be a very interesting day, and I encourage students to come and learn from these distinguished individuals.”

Nguyen was born in Vietnam and came to the United States as part of the Vietnamese Refugee Program. He graduated from Central High School in Tulsa in 1980 and earned his bachelor’s degree in management information systems from OSU in 1984. He opened the first Jimmy’s Egg, a restaurant that offers traditional American dishes for breakfast and lunch, in March 1987. The regional chain now has 54 locations in seven states. Nguyen is an advisory board member of the Oklahoma Restaurant Association. He lives in Edmond, Okla., with his wife, Yen and their three children.

Rolls is an Oklahoma native. She earned a bachelor’s degree in organizational administration from OSU in 1984 and began her career in the California office of her family’s business, Frontier Engineering, Inc., where she gained experience with government cost accounting and contract administration. Rolls pursued graduate studies at Biola University in La Mirada, Calif., and graduated with a doctorate in psychology in 1996. She and her family returned to Stillwater to support and facilitate organizational transitions occurring within Frontier Engineering in 1998. The core business of engineering design, development and manufacturing was renamed Frontier Electronic Systems (FES), and Rolls participated in many strategic initiatives focused on maturing the company into a world class, sophisticated, and highly successful business enterprise. 

In January 2008, Rolls was promoted to president and CEO of FES. Under her leadership, the company has experienced revenue growth of more than 50 percent and work force growth of 30 percent while enhancing its engineering and manufacturing capabilities and maintaining strong profitability. In conjunction with the strong leadership team at FES, Rolls maintains a core focus on strategic technology advancement and product diversity initiatives designed to insure FES’s continued success in the aerospace and defense technology marketplace.

Rolls is currently serving on the Governor’s Science and Technology Council, is a member of the Oklahoma Business Roundtable Board, and has served the local community through volunteer activities with the Stillwater Interfaith Counseling Center, Stillwater Domestic Violence Services, the YMCA, and First United Methodist Church. Rolls and her husband, Mark, are parents of two daughters.

Scovil attended OSU and double-majored in international business and marketing. He went to the University of Tulsa for law school and then returned to OSU for his MBA. Before Medefy, he co-founded web development firm Atlas Media and a medical licensure agency called Healthmark. With the help from fellow OSU grad Nathan Gilchrist, he co-founded Medefy, an app that helps users find fair-priced medical care. The inspiration came from Scovil visiting a doctor and asking how much a procedure would cost, which the doctor couldn’t answer. Medefy was built from a simple health care price list and is now an all-out health care engagement and communications application platform.

When he’s not freaking his engineering team out with new features for the app, Scovil enjoys time with friends and family, mentoring Tulsa-based startups, playing golf, watching OSU football and basketball, and ultra-competitive foosball.

For more information about CEO Day, contact Rebecca Charbonneau at 405-744-1120 or Rebecca.charbonneau@okstate.edu.