The Graduate School of Business (GSB) announced Wednesday that Herb Allison M.B.A. ‘71, a former Counselor to the Secretary of the Treasury, will be the alumni speaker at its graduation ceremony on June 11.

At his Treasury job, Allison was responsible for supervising the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program. He is also a former president and chief operating officer at Merrill Lynch and CEO of pension fund TIAA-CREF from 2002-08.

Allison was chosen from a list of potential speakers suggested by GSB students because his post-graduation experiences “stand as an example of the GSB’s call to change lives, change organizations, change the world,” said GSB Dean Garth Saloner in a press release.

Prior to his time at Stanford, Allison served four years as a naval officer and spent one year in Vietnam. After several years of working in financial services, he went to Iran to help start Merrill Lynch’s first business in a domestic capital market outside of the United States. He also was the National Finance Chairman for John McCain’s 2000 presidential campaign.

Allison also chaired the GSB’s Advisory Council between 1999 and 2001 and won the GSB’s Excellence in Leadership Award in 2005 for his decades of visionary service.

–Tyler Brown and Ivy Nguyen