{"id":1203,"date":"2025-10-15T09:18:03","date_gmt":"2025-10-15T13:18:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/som\/?p=1203"},"modified":"2025-10-16T16:11:27","modified_gmt":"2025-10-16T20:11:27","slug":"um-flint-students-attend-business-summit-ii-featuring-fortune-500-ceo-garrick-j-rochow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/som\/2025\/10\/15\/um-flint-students-attend-business-summit-ii-featuring-fortune-500-ceo-garrick-j-rochow\/","title":{"rendered":"UM-Flint students attend Business Summit II featuring Fortune 500 CEO, Garrick J. Rochow"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

University of Michigan-Flint business students joined area business executives for the Business Summit II on Oct. 13 at the Northbank Center in Flint. Together, they enjoyed networking, lunch and the featured speaker Garrick J. Rochow. Rochow is president and CEO of Consumers Energy and its Fortune 500 parent company CMS Energy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Rochow<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Rochow opened his speech by highlighting Consumers Energy\u2019s achievements and commitment to not only its shareholders but also the environment, communities it serves and employees. He then discussed the three pillars of his leadership philosophy. First, he urged leaders to be deliberate about building teams that trust one another. Second, he advised leaders to know why they do what they do, an idea first popularized by author and consultant Simon Sinek<\/a>. Lastly, he insisted that leaders call their teams to greatness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Your role as a leader is to have more belief in [your team] than they have in themselves; to have more confidence in them than they have in themselves; your job as a leader is to tell them that,” Rochow said. “It’s really about challenging the team from a timing perspective, a belief perspective and what’s possible.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tia Chanel returned to campus for the event after earning two degrees from UM-Flint, most recently her Master of Business Administration degree in 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“During my MBA program, I worked with an employee of Consumer’s Energy on a class project,” said Chanel. “That experience gave me an opportunity to learn more about his work, which I found intriguing, so today I am really interested to learn more about the company.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One student who attended the Business Summit II was Teqa Mack, a senior pursuing a Bachelor of Business Administration degree in accounting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“My goal for this year is to be visible, to meet people, to come to things … to connect with business-minded people in the community,” said Mack. “I met someone from OLV Investment Group who told me they’re a financial advisor there, which is really cool because I have an interest in investment strategy.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rochow encouraged students like Mack to offer their fresh perspectives when they enter the workforce.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Take the word ‘naive’ and throw that from your vocabulary,” he said. “You’ve got a different perspective. You’re bringing new insight when you’ve only been there six months and haven’t been indoctrinated yet.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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CMS Energy’s board of directors elected Rochow to his position in 2020. In this role, he leads approximately 8,300 employees as they leverage $36 billion in assets to achieve annual revenues exceeding $7.5 billion. He is also an executive committee member at Business Leaders For Michigan, among other institutions. Rochow has previously worked in many roles at Consumers Energy, most recently as executive vice president of operations from 2017 to 2020. He joined the company in 2003 as a site production manager in West Olive, Michigan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Business Summit II was presented by the UM-Flint School of Management, in collaboration with the Flint & Genesee Chamber. Funding for the event was provided by the university’s Critical Issues Forum, made possible by Frances Willson Thompson<\/a>. UM-Flint is grateful to Willson Thompson for her generosity in creating an ongoing community dialogue for the exchange of ideas. It is also grateful to Plante Moran, Genesee Ceramic Tile and others from the business community for their support of the Business Summit II.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SOM’s first Business Summit<\/a> took place in October 2024 as part of a yearlong celebration of its 50th anniversary. That event’s featured speaker was Ray Scott, president and CEO of Lear Corporation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SOM welcomes corporate partners in advance of the 2026 Business Summit III. To get involved, contact Patricia Sliter, corporate relations officer at UM-Flint, at 810-424-5448 or pasliter@umich.edu<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To support SOM students, please consider contributing a gift online at the Michigan Giving<\/a> website.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

University of Michigan-Flint business students joined area business executives for the Business Summit II on Oct. 13 at the Northbank Center in Flint. Together, they enjoyed networking, lunch and the featured speaker Garrick J. Rochow. Rochow is president and CEO of Consumers Energy and its Fortune 500 parent company CMS Energy. Rochow opened his speech […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":597,"featured_media":1300,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[174,60,107,1],"tags":[180,182,149,184,144],"class_list":["post-1203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-174","category-events","category-news","category-uncategorized","tag-consumers-energy","tag-garrick-rochow","tag-school-of-management","tag-som","tag-university-of-michigan-flint"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/som\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/som\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/som\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/som\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/597"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/som\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1203"}],"version-history":[{"count":37,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/som\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1203\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1313,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/som\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1203\/revisions\/1313"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/som\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/som\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/som\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.umflint.edu\/som\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}