McClure Lecture Series Featuring Moneyball Paul DePodesta, NFL's Cleveland Browns Chief Strategy Officer

Saunders College of Business is proud to host the 2023 McClure Lecture Series featuring Paul DePodesta, Cleveland Browns Chief Strategy Officer, Entrepreneur and subject of Moneyball. The McClure Lecture Series is provided through the McClure Professorship in Marketing. Supporting Saunders’ B.S. in marketing, the series invites the top experts in marketing to speak on campus or virtually at Saunders College of Business. The event will be emceed by Rochester Business Journal’s sports columnist Scott Pitoniak.

Join us virtually on April 20, at 12:30 p.m. via Zoom. Preregistration is required for the keynote speech "Using Data to Deal with Uncertainty" with a virtual VIP meet & greet to follow. 

Event Agenda

12:30-1:30 p.m. - Keynote Speech with Q&A 
1:30-2 p.m. - VIP Meet and Greet (Invite Only)

Register Today! 

About Paul DePodesta

The "Moneyball" methodology has revolutionized every industry—from Wall Street and Fortune 500 companies to government and healthcare. Paul's enlightening program draws connections between baseball and basic business operations, presenting the many parallels with lessons from the world of professional sports and talent recruiting. Paul explains how your organization can drill down “big data” output to create an applicable analytics strategy and sharpen your company's competitive edge.

Paul DePodesta has made a career of evaluating, measuring, and assigning value to talent, as documented in Michael Lewis’s book, Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game. The Moneyball methodology has become a mainstay strategy for business leaders looking for new approaches for overhauling stagnant systems.

After graduating Cum Laude from Harvard College with a degree in economics, DePodesta worked in the Canadian Football League and the American Hockey League. He then joined the Cleveland Indians Baseball Club as an intern in Player Development. Within a year, the Indians made him the advance scout for the Major League team, and two years later he was appointed Special Assistant to the General Manager. DePodesta served as Assistant General Manager of the Oakland Athletics from 1999 to 2003—a tenure during which the A’s tied for the best winning percentage in baseball (392-255).

Formerly the Executive Vice President of the San Diego Padres, and General Manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers during the 2004-05 seasons, Paul DePodesta was the third-youngest person ever to assume the role of Major League GM. Assigned the task of turning around a team that had not won a postseason game since 1988, DePodesta guided Los Angeles to a Division title and a playoff victory in his first season at the helm. Beginning in 2010, DePodesta also served as Vice President of Player Development and Amateur Scouting for the New York Mets, helping to lead the team to the 2015 World Series for the first time since 2000. 

In January 2016, DePodesta joined the NFL’s Cleveland Browns as Chief Strategy Officer. In this new role, he is responsible for assessing and implementing the best practices and strategies that will give the Browns the comprehensive resources needed to make optimal decisions for their players and team.

DePodesta is also an Assistant Professor of Bioinformatics at the Scripps Translational Sciences Institute.
 

About Scott Pitoniak

Scott Pitoniak is a nationally honored journalist and author of more than thirty-five books, including several best-sellers. A magna cum laude graduate of Syracuse University, Scott has worked as a sports columnist for the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, Gannett News Service (150 newspapers nationwide) and USA Today, and has written scores of stories for national publications and websites. He also has been a correspondent for CBS television affiliates and co-hosted an ESPN radio talk show. Scott is the recipient of more than 100 national and regional journalism awards and is a member of six halls of fame. The Associated Press Sports Editors, Professional Football Writers of America and Gannett have recognized him as one of the nation's top columnists several times. A frequent guest lecturer, Scott spent 13 years as an adjunct journalism professor at St. John Fisher University. He resides in Penfield, N.Y. with his wife, Beth, and is the father of two adult children and the grandfather of two granddaughters.

About the McClure Lecture Series

J. Warren McClure was a World War II Navy veteran and former publisher and owner of the Burlington Free Press. He sold the newspaper to Gannett Co., where he later became the first president of marketing. McClure, who turned to philanthropy in retirement, and his wife, Lois, were important members of the RIT community. McClure served on the RIT board of trustees from 1973 until 1986, was an advisor to the Saunders College of Business, and established the McClure Professorship in Marketing which includes lectures by marketing experts in the field.