The Bluegrass and Beyond

There’s no zealot like a convert, and when it comes to believing in Kentucky’s potential, there’s none like Pearse Lyons.

The energetic Irishman, who moved to Lexington three decades ago and built his Alltech nutrition supplement company into a global giant, has a few thoughts about how the future could shine brighter on his new Kentucky home.

Lyons shared some of those thoughts Thursday with the Lexington Forum, telling the monthly gathering of business folks that the keys are education, innovation and building on Kentucky’s existing strengths and resources.

Lyons hopes to showcase many of those resources next fall, when his company sponsors the 2010 Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games at the Kentucky Horse Park.

But he’s getting a head start in Britain this month at the Alltech FEI European Jumping and Dressage Championships, Aug. 25-30.

More than 60,000 spectators and 150 competitors from 32 nations are expected to attend the games at Windsor Castle. One thing they’ll find, a short walk from the arena, is a Kentucky oasis.

The Alltech Kentucky Village, a tented area inside a white-plank fence, will give visitors a literal taste of Kentucky: burgoo, hot Browns, Maker’s Mark bourbon, Dippin’ Dots ice cream and, of course, Alltech’s Kentucky Ale and Bourbon Barrel Ale.

Everett McCorvey from the University of Kentucky’s Opera Theatre program will direct a vocal ensemble. There also will be displays promoting Kentucky tourism and products.

Muhammad Ali and Pearse Lyons announced creation of the Alltech Muhammad Ali Center Global Education and Charitable Fund in Lexington in May. Alltech Photo

Lyons is taking Muhammad Ali to Windsor, thanks to the Alltech-Muhammad Ali Center Global Education and Charitable Fund. After that, Lyons and Ali head to Dublin for a fund-raising dinner and a visit to the Irish town one of Ali’s great-grandfathers left for America in the mid-1800s.

Lyons said he gets dizzy sometimes thinking about how an Irish lad of modest means could grow up to earn a Ph.D. and create a company with annual revenues of $500 million and a 35 percent profit margin — much less hobnob with people such as Ali and Queen Elizabeth II.

It all came down to education, entrepreneurship and taking advantage of opportunities. The same formula can work for Kentucky, too, he told the Lexington Forum.

Lyons noted that Kentucky and Ireland have many similarities. They’re both beautiful, mainly rural places with about 4 million people, rich heritage and a history of seeing their smart young people leave for opportunities elsewhere.

Ireland reversed its fortunes by focusing on education and innovation, and Kentucky can do the same.

This time of economic transition is when Kentucky should look for new opportunities and new ways of doing things, Lyons said.

For example, Kentucky should neither ignore its rich coal reserves, nor expect to continue mining and burning coal the old way, given environmental concerns and climate change. Instead, he said, Kentucky should be at the forefront of figuring out how to make coal more valuable “within the new rules and regulations.”

One way to do that is by focusing on carbon-capture research. Lyons thinks one solution could be algae — the fast-growing slime that produces two-thirds of the world’s oxygen by soaking up carbon dioxide.

Another opportunity is aquaculture, because Kentucky has enormous reserves of fresh water, much of it underground.

“Fish is an incredible opportunity for Kentucky,” he said. “Where the poultry industry is today, the fish industry will be tomorrow.”

Algae and aquaculture are two of many things Alltech researchers are working on.

“The possibilities for innovation are enormous,” Lyons said. But innovation requires education.

Lyons said Kentucky universities must develop programs that will retain the state’s own students and attract those from elsewhere. And he challenged Kentucky businesses to invest in education.

He said Alltech donates laboratories to schools and pays graduate students to earn Ph.D.s, do research for the company and stay in Kentucky after graduation.

While looking for new opportunities, Kentucky should continue developing signature industries such as bourbon and horses that already have infrastructure and international reputations. For example, one thing that led Alltech to develop its popular Bourbon Barrel Ale was Kentucky’s ready supply of used bourbon barrels.

Along with more focus on education, Lyons said, Kentucky needs leaders.

“The leader’s job is to bring uncertainty out and certainty in,” he said. “That’s what our state needs. Because in 20 years’ time the whole world is going to change. Which way? I’m not sure. But it’s going to change. And please God it will change, because therein lies our opportunity.”

Pearse Lyons, the founder and president of Alltech, says he has arranged to take Muhammad Ali to England in August to meet Queen Elizabeth II.

His next mission: Persuade the queen to return to Kentucky in the fall of 2010 to attend the Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games.

Pearse Lyons talks with Queen Elizabeth II at the Royal Windsor Horse Show last month. Alltech photo

Lyons and his wife, Deirdre, met the queen for the first time May 15 at the Royal Windsor Horse Show, on the grounds of ancient Windsor Castle, the British monarch’s weekend home just west of London.

Nicholasville-based Alltech is the title sponsor of both the 2010 Games at the Kentucky Horse Park and the Alltech FEI European Jumping and Dressage Championships, Aug. 25-30 at Windsor.

Thanks to a new charitable foundation that Alltech has created with the Muhammad Ali Center in Louisville, Lyons said he has arranged to take the boxing icon to the horse show at Windsor.

After that, Lyons said, he hopes to take Louisville-born Ali to Lyons’ hometown of Dublin, Ireland, on Aug. 30 for a fund-raiser he is organizing for the Alltech-Muhammad Ali Center Global and Charitable Fund.

Lyons and Ali announced the fund’s creation last month at Alltech’s 25th annual International Animal Health and Nutrition Symposium, which brought more than 1,200 people from around the world to Lexington.

Muhammad Ali and Pearse Lyons announce the Alltech-Muhammad Ali Center Global and Charitable Fund last month. Photo by Charles Bertram

Alltech launched the charitable fund with a $50,000 gift, and Lyons said several companies have indicated interest in supporting it. The goal is to raise $500,000 before the 2010 Games. The fund will support higher education scholarships and mentoring programs as well as humanitarian and disaster relief.

Lyons said he spent more than an hour with the queen at the horse show, chatting while they watched children compete on ponies. He said he talked about his new partnership with the Ali Center.

“She seemed particularly interested in Muhammad Ali,” he said. “And she’s very much into philanthropic things.”

He also made a pitch for her to return to Kentucky, which she has visited at least five times since 1984.

Lyons thinks there’s an especially good chance she will attend the 2010 Games if her granddaughter, Zara Phillips, who won the eventing championship at the 2006 World Equestrian Games in Aachen, Germany, comes to Kentucky to defend her title.

Lyons could never be described as shy, but he said meeting the queen for the first time was intimidating, even though she was friendly and down-to-earth. Before they met, Lyons said, he thought a lot about how to begin the conversation.

“I told her, ‘Your majesty, I have been disappointed in you since 1953,’” Lyons said. “To which she replied, ‘Whatever for?’

“So I explained that as a young boy my brother and I went to London. My mum and dad were going on to France, and so they left us with an aunt of ours in London. And my aunt explained that she would bring us to see the queen and then we would have tea.”

It was the queen’s coronation day, but the Lyons boys just assumed they were having tea with her personally.

Instead, they were taken to the coronation parade, where they saw her ride by in a coach.

“I said, ‘I waved at you along with hundreds and thousands of others, and then we had tea in a tea shop.’” Lyons said.

“‘Oh, how disappointing,’” she said. “‘We shall have to rectify that.’”

Lyons doesn’t know if that means he will have tea with the queen when he returns to Windsor Castle in August. But if he has Muhammad Ali with him, the odds would seem better than they once were for an Irish lad of 8.

Kentucky’s potential for success in a global economy might not be obvious to people who have lived here all of their lives.

Pearse Lyons, an Irishman who heads the animal nutrition company Alltech, says he sees it. And he is convinced it can be achieved if Kentucky invests in education, focuses on scientific innovation and markets its brand.

Lyons is barnstorming the state this week to deliver that message in a series of public lectures. He began Monday in Glasgow, then drove to Murray and Owensboro. He plans to make six more speeches around the state Tuesday and Wednesday.

Dr. Pearse Lyons

Lyons, who started Alltech in Jessamine County 28 years ago, said Kentucky has some of the same advantages that helped launch Ireland’s economy in the 1980s. Both places have about 4 million residents, and their governments and universities are small enough to be accessible.

Lyons thinks Kentucky needs more public-private partnerships to invest in education and innovation. He hopes other companies will join Alltech in funding Margin of Excellence scholarships at the universities of Kentucky and Louisville to attract and retain the bright minds who will create tomorrow’s technology.

Earning a Ph.D. degree often requires a student to study for five years while living on a $20,000 annual university stipend. After graduation, first jobs don’t pay much.

“Who in their right mind would do that?” Lyons asked during a telephone interview on the road between Glasgow and Murray. “Why does Ph.D. have to stand for Poor, Hungry and Driven?”

The Margin of Excellence scholarship provides a $40,000 annual stipend on top of the university money for up to five years, plus an additional $10,000 for published research and another $10,000 if the student stays in Kentucky for three years after graduation.

“We’ve stepped up and done the first one,” which went to UK animal nutrition student Anne Koontz, Lyons said. “We’ve got a couple of people to step up and do the second and third. What we need is like-minded business people and businesses to step up and say, ‘Let’s create the single best Ph.D. program in the world.’”

Lyons, whose company operates in 113 countries, said such scholarships could be an inexpensive way for companies to do critical research. “You couldn’t hire a technician for $40,000 a year,” he said. “And here you’re going to get the brightest and the smartest focusing on your problem. It’s a no-brainer.”

Technology could allow Kentucky to keep building on traditional strengths, such as agriculture and energy. For example, the horse industry could fund a Ph.D. student interested in figuring out how to capture methane from manure. Coal companies could fund students to study ways to create clean-coal technology by capturing carbon dioxide.

Despite the economic slump, Lyons thinks this is a good time for companies to invest in the future. For example, he said, Alltech has secured government grants to help build a bio-refinery in Springfield that will create energy from renewable cellulose, such as corn cobs, switch grass and kudzu.

“Let’s focus on the problems of Kentucky,” he said. “Let’s focus on making those problems opportunities.”

Good marketing is vital, he said, for a state as well as a company. Lyons thinks Alltech’s sponsorship of the 2010 FEI World Equestrian Games will be good for marketing his company — and Kentucky. “It’s an incredible opportunity to show Kentucky to the world,” he said.

In some ways, Kentucky has a better image abroad than it does in the United States, thanks to such exports as Thoroughbred horses, bourbon whiskey, bluegrass music and what Lyons calls the “super brands” of Kentucky Fried Chicken and Muhammad Ali.

Good marketing sometimes just means taking advantage of small opportunities. Last Friday night, Lyons was back in Dublin for a black-tie dinner to receive the Foundation Day Medal from his alma mater, University College Dublin. But he didn’t go home alone.

That same evening, Alltech sponsored a recital at the Royal Irish Academy of Music by Everett McCorvey and Tedrin Blair Lindsay of UK Opera Theater, along with four UK students who have won the school’s Alltech-sponsored vocal competition.

After the recital, McCorvey said, he secretly arranged to hurry over to Lyons’ event so he could close the dinner by performing a special arrangement of My Old Kentucky Home with University College’s Choral Scholars.

After the performance, Lyons said, “There wasn’t a dry eye in the house.”

And it exposed 600 influential people in Ireland to a brand: Kentucky.

IF YOU GO
Lyons’ lectures