C. Turney Stevens, Jr.

C. Turney Stevens, Jr., over his career has been a CEO, a public company board director, financier and investor, and higher education leader.

He served as the Dean (2008-2014) and Dean Emeritus (2014-2020) of the Lipscomb University College of business, Executive Director of the Hilton and Sallie Dean Institute for Corporate Governance and Integrity, and Professor of Management and Strategy. Prior to retiring from his business career in 2007 and returning to his alma mater to accept the role of Dean in 2008, he was an investment banker, CEO and entrepreneur for more than 35 years.

Stevens, 74, graduated from Lipscomb University (B.A. 1972) and from Vanderbilt University’s Owen Graduate School of Management (MBA 1981). In later years, he returned to Owen to complete postgraduate work in the areas of healthcare finance and entrepreneurship. He has also done postgraduate training at the University of California at Los Angeles and at Jerusalem University College.

During his business career, he served as Managing Partner of two investment banking firms, both specializing in raising equity and debt capital from institutional investors for mid-market, high growth companies. He co-founded Rodgers Capital Corporation with the late Joe M. Rodgers, former United States Ambassador to France. The firm had offices in the United States and Europe. In 2001, he co-founded Harpeth Capital to raise capital principally for high growth companies in the health care industry, focusing on a market of transactions in the $10-25 million range.

In 1993, he and partners purchased a nearly bankrupt commercial printing firm. He repositioned the company to one serving large corporate customers and, as Chairman and CEO, he led the successful turnaround, then sold the business to Kohlberg and Company. He served until 2001 as the successor company’s Chairman, building the business through 13 acquisitions to a nationwide company of more than $230 million in revenues.

Stevens has served on a variety of for profit and not for profit boards throughout his career. From 2008-2019, he served on the public board of KCAP Financial Inc. (NASDAQ: KCAP) based in New York. He chaired the Nominating and Governance Committee and served on the Compensation and Valuation committees. He stepped down along with the company’s other independent directors upon the successful completion of an exit transaction in April, 2019.

He is a graduate of the UCLA Director’s College and is a Board Fellow of the National Association of Corporate Directors. Through his service on the KCAP board, he has developed expertise related to financial institution asset valuation as well as issues related to compensation, strategy, mergers and acquisitions, and risk management.

After his return to Lipscomb in 2008, he founded the Hilton and Sallie Dean Institute for Corporate Governance and Integrity to serve as a forum for sharing and teaching best practices of corporate governance and for discussing and debating issues related to creating cultures of high integrity and high productivity in business.

Because of his founding of the Dean Institute, Stevens was named by Ethisphere Institute in December 2009 as one of the world’s 100 Most Influential Leaders in Business Ethics. He has spoken about issues related to corporate ethics, governance, and corporate strategy around the world and has taught strategy, governance, and business ethics at the MBA level at the university.

He has been married for 43 years to Ann Parrish Stevens and has two adult sons, two daughters-in-law, and four grandchildren. He is an avid, but sadly a mediocre, golfer.