Business mogul addresses Auburn students

In remarks delivered to students at Auburn University's Harbert College of Business, The Will Group chairman and Tuskegee NEXT founder Stephen Davis shared the secrets to his success.

By Daniel Schmidt

Feb. 3, 2022

AUBURN, Ala. – On a mild, blustery Saturday in November 1979, a University of Tennessee linebacker had an opportunity to recover a fumble late in the game and help his team defeat Rutgers.

Instead of falling on the ball, he attempted an unsuccessful lateral meant to keep the play alive, and the Scarlet Knights escaped Knoxville with a hard-earned victory.

Stephen Davis, chairman of The Will Group and founder of the Tuskegee NEXT program, addressed a crowd of over 100 faculty members and students in Horton-Hardgrave Hall on Tuesday about philanthropy, business and family.

“I’ve never been down a Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. and seen million-dollar homes,” Davis said.

During his hour-long speech, the entrepreneur and philanthropist railed against disinvestment in minority communities and discussed how he restores a sense of purpose in them.

The philanthropic initiative Davis focused on was the Tuskegee NEXT program, which he founded in 2016 to train minority students to become commercial airline pilots.

Davis said he was inspired to start the program in part because the Tuskegee airmen were denied the opportunity to earn a living flying after returning home from combat.

“These were some of the bravest fighters of WWII, and when they came home from combat, they couldn’t find employment flying planes. They became janitors,” Davis said.

Six years after its creation, Davis said the program has already had the intended impacted

In remarks given after the speech, he recounted a particular female student that lacked the confidence to look him in the eye until after she had completed her first solo flight.

“She got off the plane after she soloed, and she locked eyes with me with a smile and a confidence that I knew something was special,” Davis said.

Davis also spoke on intentionally placing The Will Group’s manufacturing facilities in Chicago’s North Lawndale Community to bring jobs to the area’s predominantly Black residents.

“The fact that he helps the inner cities because they don’t always get the same opportunities as everyone else stood out,” Cherish Cameron, a junior accounting major at Auburn, said.

During his speech, Davis claimed this approach is about making people subjected to poverty and gun violence for most of their lives believe in life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness again.

“Providing people with meaningful jobs is my purpose in life,” Davis said.

Davis also explained that some of the roughly 120 people employed by The Will Group have been the perpetrators of violent crimes and sought a second chance.

“I was sitting with a young man who had served 13 years in prison for a capital offense, and he couldn’t get a job,” Davis said. “Everyone was afraid of him, but my daughter said, ‘let’s give him a chance.’”

The driving force behind Davis’ business and philanthropic success was not lost on what proved to be a captivated and interactive audience.

“His message of turning transactions into transformations and turning business opportunities into something bigger had a big impact on me,” Trevon Brown, a junior accounting major at Auburn, said.

Throughout the speech, Davis routinely invoked the values instilled in him by his late father and mother and credited his success to his upbringing.

“My dad told me ‘Steve, your mannerisms and your kindness will get you places money never will,’” Davis said.

It has now been over 42 years since Stephen Davis cost his team the game after failing to secure that fumble against Rutgers. In the time since that moment of failure, the philosophy behind his philanthropy and business successes has been simple: with every failure comes opportunity.