Early in his life, Cory Gunderson (BUS ’91) wanted two things: stability and success.  

For Cory, the son of working-class parents on the North Side of Chicago, stability and success were not opposites but complements. He had ambitions to be a leader. At the same time, he was cognizant of the sacrifices his parents had made to invest in his education; he saw his future as a return on their investments. Success wouldn’t just mean fulfilling his ambition or honoring his family's investments. It would mean a more stable future for the next generation. 

Today, Cory is the COO of Protiviti, a widely respected global consulting firm. He holds the kind of role that many people see as the pinnacle of professional success.

Even now, though, it’s the interplay between stability and success — between ambition and pragmatism — that defines his story.  

A first-generation foundation

When Cory was in high school at Lane Tech, he was already a businessman in the making. His parents jokingly referred to him as “Alex Keaton”, after the suit-wearing teenager the actor Michael J. Fox portrayed on “Family Ties.”  

In 1987, Cory entered DePaul as a first-generation college student. During the afternoon, he worked in the Loop, first at a downtown bank and later at Arthur Andersen. In the mornings and at night, he walked a few blocks to DePaul’s campus.  

At DePaul, he found camaraderie.  

“I feel a lot of affinity and affection for what I was taught and who I was able to interact with while I was at DePaul,” he said. “So many DePaul students come from similar backgrounds. They’re first-generation students. They’re trying to build a better life, and their families are sacrificing to help them do that. That builds a culture. And you feel part of that.”  

A self-defined “data enthusiast,” Cory also fell in love with accounting. He was part of the Strobel Honors program, and fondly recalls professors invested in their students’ success and passionate about bringing the business world into the classroom.  Fueling his ambitions, it didn’t hurt that he learned that a high number of C-suite executives also had accounting backgrounds.  

Cory graduated from DePaul in 1991 and started full-time at Arthur Andersen as a CPA. He also married his high school sweetheart, Kim. While living in different cities, they met on a global exchange student trip and stayed in touch ever since. Today, he regularly refers to her as “the better Gunderson.” As he launched his career, they began building their family.

For the first ten years of his career, pursuing success felt like a steady climb up the ranks. He took on new projects in external audit, then advisory and consulting services. He earned his MBA from the University of Chicago, specializing in marketing and finance to ensure he had a broad view of business. 

“I thought my career was going to look like making partner at Andersen,” he said. “I thought I was going to retire there. It was probably one of the most stable firms in the world.

“And then it evaporated.”

Seizing the moment

In 2002, the ENRON scandal shook the audit business. In the aftermath, Andersen dissolved.

Most of the firm’s employees dispersed to the “Big Four” audit firms.  

But Cory, along with about 700 other employees in Andersen’s internal audit and business risk consulting practice, took a different path. They joined (and formed) a brand-new company under the parent company Robert Half.

“We barely had a name. We didn’t have letterhead. All the things you take for granted — policies, procedures, processes — we had to build from scratch,” Cory recalls. “And we also had to convince clients to hire us.”

The company would become Protiviti. In those early days, Cory encountered a new version of what success might look like. Instead of reaching for stability, he moved towards the unknown. He honed an entrepreneurial mindset; he found that he loved building something from the ground up.

In those early days of Protiviti, he also found a version of leadership stripped down to its essence.  

“You couldn’t point to all the things Protiviti had done,” he said. “Clients weren’t hiring you for a brand, or a track record. You had to sell the vision. And that was scary and rewarding at the same time.”  

Leadership as a learning process

Cory built the rest of his career at Protiviti. He became the firm’s Chief Operating Officer in 2024.  

Now, Cory understands that success is a moving target: that at the very top, leadership is more of a team effort than ever.  

“As you move up in an organization, you learn that healthy leadership means seeking counsel more often,” he said. “You share your vantage points and perspectives with each other. And then you try to make the best decision you can.”  

For Cory, leadership also looks like empathy – not only expanding your perspective, but allowing your decisions to shape you too.  

“It’s really easy to misjudge a situation or a person when you don’t have the full picture,” he said. “Leadership is a neverending learning process. It can be frustrating at times, and humbling, but that challenge is also what makes the work meaningful – you’re never finished learning, and you’re always evolving.”

Empathy guides his work outside of Protiviti. He and Kim have established several scholarships for fellow first-generation college students: one at Cory’s high school alma mater Lane Tech and another at DePaul. He serves on the executive committee of Driehaus’ Business Advisory Council, as well as on boards for the Museum of American Finance and Lane Tech’s alumni association.  

For Cory, these ideas are deeply connected: stability and success, leadership and service.  When he thinks about the values that guide him now, he traces them back to his formative years at DePaul.

“I wrote a paper at DePaul for a political science course," he said. “It was called ‘Capitalist with a Heart.’ I always knew I wanted to be a business leader. But I was also very connected to the social side of things — to the human side of things.  

“And I think DePaul is a huge part of that. You learn the fundamentals of business. But you also learn that there is a whole world out there. Over the decades that have followed, ‘capitalist with a heart’ has always been a phrase that I’ve tried to keep in the back of my mind. And I look to and thank DePaul for that.” 

Cory will be the speaker at this year's Driehaus Executive Speaker Series. Join him and Dean Sulin Ba on May 5, 2026 for an engaging discussion about leadership, capitalizing on change, making it as a first-generation college student, and more.