Goodyear's Navarro receives award

April 27, 2004

The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co.'s Rick Navarro has received the 2003 Jerry I. Porras Award for Latino Leadership.

As senior vice president of business development and integration, Navarro is responsible for developing and coordinating strategies to achieve business growth and profitability through acquisitions, divestitures, mergers and joint ventures.

His leadership service included tutoring college students in mathematics, mentoring young Latino professionals and working with a program to provide the underpriviledged with clothing to wear on job interviews.

In his keynote speech, Navarro said employee development in corporate America is key to developing productivity gains and sustainable growth.

"We must realize that to retain and add jobs here, we need to use our inventiveness and innovation to create value for our customers and our customers' customer. It's all about adding value to the customer and the enterprise, and then working on continuous improvement to continue adding value as our business needs change."

Immediately prior to joining Goodyear, Navarro was senior vice president of corporate development for Solectron Corp.

The Jerry I. Porras Award, named after a popular Latino professor, is presented by the Stanford Graduate School of Business' Hispanic Business Student Association to honor an alumnus for business achievement coupled with community involvement.