NATIONWIDE’S JERRY JURGENSEN
A PASSION FOR DEVELOPING EVERYONE’S POTENTIAL
By Barbara Frankel
Jerry Jurgensen is CEO
of Nationwide, No.
108 on the Fortune 500
list and one of the largest
insurance and financial-services companies in the
world. But Jurgenson, who
has held this post for eight
years, is very approachable.
He’s passionate and very
focused, especially when it
comes to talking about education and opportunities
to level the playing field.
I recently sat down with
him in his office at Nationwide’s headquarters in Columbus, Ohio, to discuss
his company’s and his own
commitment to the city
and how he communicates
his sense of fairness to all
of Nationwide’s approximately 36,000 employees.
Frankel: I would like to
start by talking to you
about Nationwide’s role
in giving back to the
community and your personal
role in helping build Columbus.
Jurgensen: Everyone who
comes to work for this company,
myself included, finds out pretty
quickly how involved in the community our company has been. It
goes back to our founding (in the
1920s). Originally, we were the
Ohio Farm Bureau Mutual Insurance Co. It was started by a bunch
of farmers around the idea that
the rate that farmers were paying
for automobile insurance in the
country was too high relative to
what people in the city paid. Embedded in the cooperative movement is people helping people.
With that as a foundation, it was
pretty natural that the company
would get very involved with what
was going on in the community.
Another catalyst was a large
sense of civic responsibility when
Nationwide made the decision to
remain in downtown Columbus
(in the 1960s). Like many cities
across the country, the
urban core was under
some significant challenges and there was almost
this flight movement to
the suburbs. Nationwide’s
CEO at the time made the
decision that even though
land was cheap in the suburbs and you could get
free surface parking and
a lot of things that would
be of benefit to our associates, there was also a
responsibility to the city.
We actually sought out
a site here at the north
end of downtown, which
was probably the most
blighted at the time, and
made a decision to erect
the building that you’re
in today on this site. Now,
30-plus years later, that
decision has blossomed
into a total revitalization
of the whole north side
of Columbus and really
extends all the way up to
the university, which is about 12
miles to the north of us. It’s one
of the great urban-renewal stories
in America.
“I just feel very strongly that we have an obligation to try to let
people become whatever their talents will let them become.”
Frankel: I understand that
there has been a real effort in
the last few years to rebuild
downtown Columbus.
Jurgensen: There has been, and
it certainly extends way beyond
Nationwide’s efforts, but a lot of
things in life require a catalyst,
