Meet the Authors
Joel Ross
Universal Electric Corporation, Chief executive Officer 1990 - 2019
Joel Ross grew up in Pittsburgh as the second of four children of Donald and Vicki Ross, watching his father engineer electrical safety systems and his grandfather wire up the city's steel mills. A graduate of Graceland University in Lamoni, Iowa, Ross joined the family's electrical manufacturing business in 1979 as a sales representative, calling on industrial customers across the country. When his father, Donald Ross Jr., died unexpectedly of cancer in 1990, Ross — then in his early thirties — stepped into the role of CEO of what would become Universal Electric Corporation (UEC), leading the company alongside his brother Steve through nearly three decades of transformational growth.
Under Ross's stewardship, UEC evolved from a regional manufacturer of electrical safety systems into a global leader in power distribution technology, with factories on three continents, more than 500 employees, and annual revenues exceeding $200 million. He completed executive leadership studies at the University of Pittsburgh's Institute for Entrepreneurial Excellence and is a longtime member of the Family Firm Institute.
A servant leader whose open-door policy was legendary among employees, Ross has been guided throughout by a deep faith and the conviction that a family business's greatest competitive advantage is its values.
Leeanne Seaver
Author/journalist
Leeanne Seaver, a wordsmith who's usually got a camera around her neck, spent the first half of her career in broadcasting in Virginia and Colorado. A Virginia Association of Broadcasters and Denver Regional Telly award-winning writer/producer/director, Seaver also received the national PRSA Silver Anvil Award before shifting her focus to full-time writing in 2012. She is a journalist and author/ghostwriter whose book commissions have ranged from business to travel to memoir to medicine. Seaver studied at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop and has a Master’s in Mass Comm from the University of Denver, Colorado. She is a member of the board of directors for Bridge Multimedia NYC, FCEI International, and Hands & Voices, an organization she co-founded in 1997 that was inspired by raising her Deaf son.
For her non-profit work, Seaver won the Antonia Brancia Maxon Award in 2009 and was named Redbook Magazine’s “Red Hot Mama of the Month” in January. In 2010, Hands & Voices created The Seaver Vision Award “in recognition of Leeanne’s extraordinary commitment to families with children who are Deaf and hard of hearing. Her visionary leadership and keen insight as a parent, co-founder, and first executive director of Hands & Voices helped set the standard for unwavering advocacy, unbiased parent support, effective parent involvement, and parent/professional collaboration.”