Today, at its convocation ceremony at Hamilton Place, the DeGroote School of Business will confer an honourary doctor of laws degree on one of its own alumni. Rob Burgess graduated from McMaster University’s Faculty of Business in 1979.

In 2001, while CEO of Macromedia, Burgess was named the second recipient of the school’s Wayne C. Fox Distinguished Alumni Award.

Now on the Board of Directors at Adobe, which purchased Macromedia in 2005, and other tech companies in the Silicon Valley area, Burgess looks back on a successful career as a “turnaround CEO” and credits his time at McMaster with starting that trend.

As a student, Burgess took over management of Breadbin, the campus grocery store. After making a number of changes, the store soon began making money rather than losing it.

Burgess had no grand design for being a turn-around CEO. “I never had the ambition of being CEO until I was one,” he says. “I never really applied for a job – one thing just led to the next.”

The School of Business published a more in-depth profile of Burgess and his career – written by esteemed business journalist and current Business Writer in Residence Gordon Pitts – on its website last week.

The 2014 spring convocation ceremony will confer degrees on 482 Bachelor of Commerce graduates and 278 graduates of DeGroote’s Master of Business Administration program.