Regional Transportation Leader Awarded Drucker Honor
Hasan Ikhrata, executive director of the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG), is the recipient of this year’s Peter Drucker Award for Excellence in Supply Chain & Logistics Management. The annual award honors a business leader who exhibits integrity, builds strengths, and serves the common good.
“This year’s honoree embodies all of these principles and is a shining example of excellence in management within the logistics and supply chain industry,” said Jenny Darroch, the Henry Y. Hwang Dean of the Drucker School of Management and Professor of Innovation, Entrepreneurship & Marketing. “Ikhrata values and strives for creating links between the public and private sectors for economic growth and improved quality of life.”
Darroch presented the award to Ikhrata April 20 before a large lunchtime audience at the 2017 Southern California Logistics and Supply Chain Summit in Pomona. In her presentation remarks, Darroch pointed to the continuing relevance of Peter Drucker’s teachings for management and society today, outlining the five key areas of the “Drucker School of Thought”: a belief in the importance of a functioning society, a focus on people, a focus on performance, a focus on self-management, and a transdisciplinary, lifelong approach to learning that “encourages managers … to look across discipline boundaries to address some of the world’s most pressing problems.”
Darroch explained how Ikhrata’s selection for the Peter Drucker Award, which included an interview with Darroch, was based on his career demonstration of Drucker principles, adding that “we need more leaders like Hasan, who are willing to ask what they can do for society and to society if we want the world to be a better place.”
Ikhrata has served as executive director of SCAG, a six-county agency that crafts transportation plans for the region, since January 2008. In this capacity, he implements the policies of an 86-member regional council and directs day-to-day operations of the agency. He is credited as a transformational and unifying leader who has enhanced SCAG’s value to member agencies and fostered unprecedented levels of public input and participation in the development of regional transportation plans.
Prior to joining SCAG in 1994, Ikhrata worked for the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the South Coast Air Quality Management District; and abroad for the USSR government, Moscow Metro Corporation.
He has received several awards and honors from various organizations and agencies, including MOVE LA for Outstanding Leadership as Executive Director of SCAG in preparation of the 2012 Regional Transportation Plan/Sustainable Communities Strategy. He has also been recognized by the American Society of Public Administration, the Southern California Leadership Council, the Orange County Transportation Authority, the Orange County Council of Governments, the Orange County Business Council, and others.
Ikhrata holds Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Civil and Industrial Engineering from Zaporozhye University in the former Soviet Union and a Master’s degree in Civil Engineering from UCLA; and he is a PhD candidate in Urban Planning and Transportation from USC.
The award honors Drucker’s “Spirit of Performance” in Management Excellence and is given to a business leader who exhibits high levels of integrity in moral and ethical conduct, focuses on results, builds on strengths, leads beyond borders to meet the requirements of stakeholders, and ultimately serves the common good in the field of supply chain and logistics.
The summit is an annual event co-hosted by the Inland Empire Economic Partnership and the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce.