Trustee spotlight.

• Author: Walker, Robert R.
• Position: Robert R. Bob Walker - Financial Executives Research Foundation

"What we are trying to produce is research that will be useful to practicing financial executives," says Robert R. (Bob) Walker, who became FERF chair on July 1, for a one-year term. "This requires a balance between anticipating issues that will affect financial executives in the near future and providing practical guidance for what they are doing now."

Having served for several years on the FERF Research Committee, Walker notes that when selecting projects, "We always ask ourselves: Is this useful? Is it unique? Is it relevant?"

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He understands that selecting the right research topics is not an easy task. " If you get too far ahead of the curve, no one will care about what you provide, because they have so much on their plates already. But if you don't lead practice, you won't provide any real value to our members."

Walker (profiled in the July/August 2005 issue of Financial Executive) has worn a number of different hats. He has been a senior financial executive--he retired as CFO of Agilent Technologies in 2001--and now serves on several boards of directors. Having served as Hewlett-Packard Co.'s first chief information officer, Walker brings an IT perspective to FERF and its research agenda.

For FEI and FERF, Bob chaired FEI's board of directors from July 2005 to June 2006, and joined the FERF Research Committee shortly thereafter. He became a FERF trustee in July 2008 and FERF chair in July 2009. "I now read FERF research from both the perspective of an active board member and a financial executive," he says.

Walker maintains a broad perspective. "My advantage is that I have worked for a very large company (HP) and I have been a director for some...