Success was not handed to Gordon Clemons (’65), nor did
it come fast or easy. In fact, he was continually faced with adversity— both on and off the basketball court— which led him to eventually found and become CEO and Chairman of CorVel Corporation. A perseverance learned in athletics paved the way to great success in the health and insurance business world.
Although Clemons had always been a good student, he was bashful and dealt with a stutter when he was younger. Starting out at Oregon State University in engineering, his focus was less on academics and more on making the basketball team as fresh- man walk-on.
“We were told that the five players who made the team would be on a list on the locker room door in the basement after a certain time on Saturday morning,” Clemons said. “I can remember it like it was yesterday, walking down that hallway and seeing the paper taped to the door as I approached. I wanted to be on that team more badly than anything I’d ever done.”
Clemons found his name on the list, but being on the team came at a price.
He got “beat up” on the basketball court, did not get much playing time, and was forced into a rigorous class schedule.
“In order to play basketball I had to take honors math, honors chemistry and honors English — that was the only way I could make my schedule fit,” Clemons recalls.
Although he enjoyed the technical side of engineering, his academics suffered. It wasn’t until he switched
to business that things finally started coming together for him. Business was a perfect fit and that was the turning point in his academic career at OSU.
“I got into the business school and had some good experiences,” Clemons said. “There was a class where you built models—it was a competitive class, which I liked. You would run your company and compete against others that would run their company. Friends and I spent a lot of time talking to our professor and that was the spark that was most noticeable to me. I was involved and doing the things I should have been doing. I was talking to the professor, asking questions.”
It was with the combination of business, engineering and a tenacity to keep working that he launched into the ups and downs of the business world.
After graduating from the OSU College of Business, Clemons applied to graduate school at University of Oregon. He didn’t get in the first time, but made it on his second attempt.
Upon receiving his graduate degree, he ventured to Detroit to work at Ford Motor Company, but Detroit was
“too harsh.”
He then headed to the Bay Area and received his introduction to insurance at FMC Corporation, a company that made pharmaceutical excipients, the non-active ingredients in medications. Clemons admits that he was eventually let go at FMC and found himself without a job.
He then spent time working with an entrepreneurial company, selling loans through the mail in Philadelphia. With concerns about the financial operations, he left and joined CIGNA, where he ran a subsidiary for five years, which was followed by a position at Caremart, a healthcare company. Eventually they were bought out by Baxter, and Clemons once again found himself in a transition phase.
“I was not a star [playing basketball], so I was used to having lots of disappointments. It does help you realize you can handle anything, and when you go on and have difficulties, you are ready for it,” said Clemons. “I think the long grind when you are trying year after year to make it and you never do, but you never give up is kind of what I brought with me to business. I didn’t have any immediate success in business but I sort of enjoyed each step of the way.”
It was then that Clemons and an- other investor started CorVel, and the hard work and determination began
to pay off. CorVel Corporation is now
a publically-traded leader in workers’ compensation solutions for employers, third-party administrators, government agencies and insurance companies. Since going public in the summer of 1991, CorVel has compounded at a rate of over 15% a year for the past 22 years. The company netted $4 million from the IPO and has taken that and built a company that has returned over $300 million to shareholders in stock repurchases and has built a cap value of over $500 million.
Clemons summarizes the key to his success and to that of CorVel in one word, ‘kaizen.’ It’s a Japanese word that means improvement in many small steps.
“For us, success is made in many small improvements,” he said. “At times adding a new service, other times adding something all the time. It is a mindset for innovators. I have never had an invention that was one big a-ha moment in the middle of the night. It’s always been lots of little things.”
