Riding the Inflection Point

CMU alumnus William Meaney leads Iron Mountain to global success

Energetic, enthusiastic and endlessly curious, Carnegie Mellon University alumnus William Meaney has always loved a challenge — and the more complex, the better.

During his noteworthy career, the Tepper School of Business Class of 1986 graduate spent 27 years successfully consulting for, leading and turning around companies overseas.

Most recently, as CEO of Portsmouth, New Hampshire-based Iron Mountain, a global leader in innovative storage, data center, asset life cycle management and information management services, William has led the organization to impressive growth and transformation.  

“I like businesses that are at inflection points — from huge turnarounds to managing growth spurts,” he says. “It adds a level of adrenaline to the situation.”  

Since he took the helm, Iron Mountain’s annual growth has increased from under 2% to more than 14% while share price has nearly doubled. Today, he runs the S&P 500 company with more than 26,000 “Mountaineers” across 60 countries serving more than 225,000 customers. 

As a young man with math and science talent, William was encouraged to pursue engineering by his father, who had been a U.S. Marine. The New Hampshire native took the advice and headed to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute — and into Marine Corps ROTC. After graduation (and to his father’s dismay), he turned down a lucrative engineering offer to join the CIA in paramilitary or special operations.

“It was another way to serve,” William explains. “I loved it. I mean, the work and mission were fantastic. It was a true honor to be able to serve our country in such a capacity.”

Two years later, his father fell ill. Believing he’d need to run the family business, William enrolled at the Tepper School. With characteristic energy and drive, William completed his coursework while continuing part time at the CIA, teaching undergraduate finance for now Emeritus Professor of Financial Economics Kenneth B. Dunn and grading for Richard C. Green Professor of Financial Economics Robert M. Dammon.

Fortunately, William’s father recovered. Torn between returning to the job he loved and a desire for more stability, he ultimately joined the consulting firm Strategic Planning Associates (SPA) in their London office. 

“Especially after the training at Carnegie Mellon, I was interested in large complex problems which lend themselves to deep analytics,” he says. “If you have an engineering mentality, consulting is an interesting intersection because it really is about taking businesses apart and putting them back together.” 

After SPA’s acquisition, William chose to remain abroad, running his own international consultancy as he considered interesting managerial opportunities, even stepping in as interim CEO for a struggling South African biotech client.

“Business is complex, but if you add change management and complicated ways of doing business, and on top of that, doing it all globally, it just adds a whole new aspect,” William says. “It’s really three-dimensional versus two-dimensional chess because of the cultural overlay, so I was pretty fascinated.” 

William later began consulting for the new CEO of troubled South African Airways, and within two months was hired as their No. 2. Success there led to his being sought out by newly formed and struggling Swiss International Airways. It was a particularly challenging situation where he honed his transparent and trusted leadership style, maintaining key union support even through unavoidable restructuring. This high-profile position prompted a prominent Swiss family to bring William in as the first non-family CEO for their privately held global conglomerate, The Zuellig Group, based in Hong Kong. There, he tripled annual sales from $4 billion to $12 billion.

Eventually looking to return to a public company — and after 27 years overseas — William accepted the offer to lead Iron Mountain. He and his Swiss wife and children uprooted from Hong Kong to Boston in 2013 — and coincidentally right back to his New England roots.

William saw brand strength and great potential in Iron Mountain, which — true to form — he’s transformed and modernized in myriad ways.

First, he led international expansion of existing services, particularly in fast-growing markets “where companies were still producing and storing paper,” increasing limited international sales to approximately 45% and emerging market sales from approximately 10% to 20%.

At the same time, capitalizing on the decades-old loyalty of the company’s customers — 950 of the Fortune 1000 — he spearheaded the addition of newer, cutting-edge services, dramatically increasing data center capability and partnering with Google to build an artificial intelligence/machine learning content services platform. All the while, he remained sensitive to the delicate balance between pushing growth and employee unease.

“When you’re in a high-growth situation, you don’t have a burning platform,” he observes. “So when you introduce change, tough medicine, you don’t have the same kind of fertile ground. People don’t like change. We’re not wired for that.”

But William both lives by and counsels his people “to become comfortable being uncomfortable.” He’s helped by his appreciation of Iron Mountain’s strong, supportive culture where employees refer to each other as “Mountaineers” and couriers have been known to spontaneously give William a hug.

Appreciative of his success, William credits a great deal to the Tepper School, “grateful” for his experience there. He recalls an international business class that sparked his desire to work abroad.

“There are different things in your life that open those doors,” he says. “GSIA gave me 27 years of an international career.”  

He enjoyed the interesting international student body and small class sizes where professors “knew your name the day you walked in.” And critically, he sharpened his analytic knowledge and abilities. 

“GSIA is all about finding the truth that will set you free — which is also engraved on the entrance wall at the CIA,” he notes. “The integrity is through the analytics. If you come out of GSIA, you’re not afraid to do the hard work, to really understand the foundations of the issue or the business and then reassemble it and build it up right. That kind of deep analytical understanding with the work ethic to do it really is fundamental.” 

Demonstrating his gratitude, William has served on Carnegie Mellon’s Board of Trustees and has maintained generous support, including the establishment of a scholarship fund. His daughter also is currently attending Carnegie Mellon’s College of Engineering.

“Besides [my life with] my parents, there are three other experiences that truly formed me,” William says. “My summer jobs working for the Morrell family at Story Land in New Hampshire; RPI ROTC that led me into the CIA, where I was really blessed and privileged to be able to work for our country; and my time at Carnegie Mellon that actually formed my creative curiosity.”