Summer 2002
Sorum maxes out to get motivated
Photo by Diana Watters
Nikki Sorum ('83, economics) has a recipe for success. It's carried the 41-year-old business woman from the U, where she graduated summa cum laude, through an M.B.A. at the Harvard Business School and on into the ever-ascending arc of a fast-paced career in financial management. "I always got my best grades when I was completely maxed out," she says. "Being very busy gives me great focus and makes me highly productive."
Anyone who has reviewed Sorum's list of professional accomplishments would be forced to conclude that she's probably been maxed-out for the last several decades. Still, her recipe seems to have paid off both professionally and as a prescription for personal fulfillment.
In March, Sorum joined the Aid Association for Lutherans/Lutheran Brotherhood (AAL/LB) as the company's first ever group director for New Business Ventures. AAL/LB was formed earlier this year from the merger of two venerable faith-based financial services companies. Sorum will bring to it management skills honed during her years as a senior vice president with financial services company RBC Dain Rauscher and partner at McKinsey & Co., the well-known management consulting firm.
Sorum's responsibilities at the newly merged financial giant will include oversight of an expanded array of investment opportunities and insurance options to be offered to the company's three million clients. She explains that AAL/LB is something of a financial services hybrid. "We are a fraternal society owned by our members, but we're also a Fortune 500 financial services company, focusing on the Lutheran market. We're an interesting blend of faith, values and finances."
In her non-working hours, Sorum concentrates on her family. She and her husband have three children, ages nine, seven, and two. Someday, she'd like to get back to playing the alto saxophone; she spent four years in the marching band at the U. Nowadays, though, she finds her musical interests channeled into supervising her children's piano practice.
It's a busy, hectic life, but Sorum thrives on it. In some ways, it's just what she planned for herself when she was an undergraduate. She says, "In my business, you've got to be well-informed, but [what you do] also has to be practical and action-oriented. I like that combination."
Sorum may always have looked forward to a business career, but that doesn't mean she arrived at the Minneapolis campus fully ready to tackle tough management problems. She says that coming to the U for college was "the biggest change in my life. There were 2,000 people in Pelican Rapids, [Minn.] when I was growing up, and in the Twin Cities there are 50,000 at the U alone." Life at the Big U meant that Sorum had to reevaluate her small-town habit of tossing a friendly greeting at everyone she encountered.
"I would walk along [on campus]" she reports, "saying hello to people, and I couldn't understand why perfect strangers were looking at me so strangely."
Sorum says she never really lost her friendly ways. Another thing she seems to have held on to is her deep respect for the University of Minnesota. She's a strong advocate for the value of a liberal arts education for the aspiring business person. "In business," she explains, "you can learn the specifics of a product line on the job, but … you need to be able to write well, speak well, and think. Those are the things a liberal arts education teaches you."
As befits a former economics major, she also admires the U's ability to deliver value for the money. "I got a great education at the U and paid a fraction of a private school's cost." she says. "Being in the CLA Honors Program where we worked closely with professors in small classes was terrific. The students [in the Honors Program] were every bit as good as anyone I encountered later at Harvard Business School."
Although Sorum says her life has become even more tightly wound than it was in her days in the U's marching band, she has no complaints. "We don't do a lot of extra stuff beyond family and work. And that's great. I love my life now."