Featured Leader: Bill Parfet

It won't escape people's attention that William Upjohn Parfet is the great-grandson of William Erastus Upjohn when news of MPI Research expansion into downtown Kalamazoo is announced.

But few people will know what was on Bill Parfet's mind when he bought the troubled labs in 1995, a company beset with financial and public relations problems, a firm worth arguably $6 million.

Fewer still might have forecast success. But a career manager at Upjohn at the time, where Parfet had risen to President and Vice Chairman -- but where he was told he could go no higher -- predicted the "young" Parfet, son of long-time CEO R.T. Parfet, would make good.

"I've worked for 26 different managers at Upjohn in my career," the manager said in 1995, "and Bill was the most dynamic, most transformational of any, and believe me, there were a lot of good ones."

Parfet is too positive to view a return to the old Upjohn buildings downtown with a full head of steam as revenge for not being tapped for the top job. Additionally, he didn't lament that Kalamazoo was going to hell in a handbasket when big corporations, including Upjohn successor organizations, began their exit.

Instead, he rolled up his sleeves and built something that W.E. Upjohn would have been proud of.