John D. Zeglis

Zeglis was born and brought up in the farming community of Momence, Illinois. His father, Donald, worked as a lawyer. Zeglis played basketball and golf in high school and graduated in 1965.[1] He attended summer camp at the Culver Academies as a teenager.

Zeglis attended the University of Illinois College of Business for his undergraduate studies[2]. Both of Zeglis's parents attended the University of Illinois, and he thought it was a perfect fit. While there, he served as the house president of Beta Theta Pi and was a member of Sigma Iota Epsilon. He was also admitted to Beta Gamma Sigma and Phi Kappa Phi. He graduated in 1969 as the valedictorian of the College of Commerce and Business Administration, now known as the Gies College of Business, with a bachelor of science degree in finance.[1] Zeglis went on to attend Harvard Law School, where he served as the senior editor of the Harvard Law Review and graduated magna cum laude with a juris doctorate, in 1972.[1] Right after law school, he studied law and economics in Europe on a Knox Memorial fellowship.

Zeglis began his career in 1973 in Chicago, Illinois as an associate at the law firm now known as Sidley Austin. He became an official partner five years later in 1978. While there, he worked on the defense of the AT&T account during the antitrust lawsuit United States v. AT&T, and when the case resulted in the breakup of the AT&T/Bell System, he helped restructure the system. With Zeglis' help, AT&T had successfully broken up into the "Baby Bells" by 1984. After the breakup, he left Sidney Austin and joined AT&T as a vice-president and general counsel.[1]

In early 1997 C. Michael Armstrong was named CEO of AT&T, and Armstrong appointed Zeglis as President of AT&T later in that same year. In 1999, Zeglis assumed the positions of chairman and CEO of AT&T Wireless. He ended his service as president of AT&T in 2001, but he continued to serve as chairman and CEO of AT&T Wireless. Zeglis held these positions all the way until AT&T Wireless was sold to Cingular and dissolved in 2004.[1] After the dissolution, Zeglis announced that he would be retiring from telecommunications to follow other pursuits.[1]

In 2007, Zeglis and others founded the Fort Wayne Mad Ants,[3] an NBA Development League Team. They were the first basketball team in the Fort Wayne area since 2001, when the Fort Wayne Fury of the Continental Basketball Association folded after a ten-year stint in the CBA. The nickname "Mad Ants" is a reference to 18th century military officer "Mad" Anthony Wayne, who oversaw the construction of the original Fort Wayne[4]. The Mad Ants play at the Allen County War Memorial Coliseum in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Zeglis was a primary shareholder as well as the president of the Mad Ants. The height of the team's success was in 2014 when they went undefeated in the playoffs and won an NBA D-League championship.

In September 2015, the Pacers Sports and Entertainment group bought the Mad Ants[5] and converted them into the Indiana Pacers' minor league team. This transaction was one of the hallmark steps in the development of the D-League into a one-to-one affiliate league with the NBA. The D-League is now known as the G League due to the multimillion dollar sponsorship deal between the NBA and Gatorade in 2015, two years after Zeglis sold the Mad Ants[6].

Zeglis has served on a number of corporate, educational and philanthropic boards of trustees and directors, shown below:

• Sara Lee Corporation - international consumer-goods company
• Helmerich and Payne Corporation - international petroleum company
• Illinova Corporation - energy company, subsidiary of Dynegy
• The Brookings Institution - think tank based in Washington, DC
• Kellogg School - School of Management at Northwestern University
• State Farm - insurance company with headquarters in Bloomington, IL
• Gies College - College of Business at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
• George Washington University - four-year institution in Washington, DC

Zeglis, 72, is now retired and resides near Culver, IN with his wife Carol on the eastern shore of Lake Maxinkuckee. He frequently takes part in Culver Academy events, an example being an alumni address in 2019 that he participated in along with one of his sons, Mark, and his daughter, Julie. Zeglis reflected on how his experiences at the Academy taught him how to deal with decision-making and uncertainty, which helped him work through things that “[he] had never done before” at AT&T and Sidley Austin"[7].