Fowler Scholars' Featured Guest Speaker: Ronda Sedillo

Sedillo and the Fowler Scholars.

Being a Fowler Scholar provides a student with many unique opportunities. One of those opportunities includes meeting with successful business leaders within the San Diego community. Last Tuesday, the Fowler Scholars had the chance to meet with Ronda Sedillo. 

Aztec Alum to Padres CFO 

Sedillo is an accounting alumna of the Fowler College of Business. After graduation, she spent seven years at PWC and 12 years at Arrowhead General Insurance Agency (AGIA) as Chief Accounting and Chief Financial Officer. In her most recent role, she served as Senior Vice President/Chief Financial Officer for the San Diego Padres until 2021. 

A lifelong Aztec and San Diego native, Sedillo remains active on-campus. She is a lecturer in the Charles W. Lamden School of Accountancy, bringing in over 30 years of industry experience. 

Ethics Debate

This week, Sedillo led our Fowler Scholars in a debate over the ethics of food delivery service apps such as UberEats, DoorDash, and Postmates. Two questions were posed: are food delivery app services any different from companies such as UPS and FedEx? The second being, did food delivery app services take advantage of restaurants during the pandemic with price gouging tactics? 

Upon debate and discussion, the Fowler Scholars determined that the food delivery service apps did not partake in unethical behavior and restaurants ultimately have the final decision in aligning and working with these app services. Food delivery apps provide a variety of services for restaurants including marketing and delivery. The students came to the conclusion that the drivers were the ones being treated most unfairly in this situation, not the restaurants. They also concluded that food delivery services are no different from UPS and FedEx, who also charge rates to ship items. Just because these apps specialize in food delivery does not make them a monopoly, they are simply filling a niche in the market. 

Ronda’s mentee from the Fowler Scholars Program, Rhys Aiem, shares his thoughts on the practice:

Sedillo and Fowler Scholars during their debate over the ethics behind food delivery apps.

“Our class held two mock debates deliberating whether food delivery apps’ hazy fees are any different from standard delivery fees from services like UPS and FedEx, fees we don’t bat an eye over in our everyday lives. We also discussed whether or not delivery apps took advantage of restaurants over the pandemic, engaged in price gouging, and the ethical repercussions of these issues.  

For each discussion, we had a pros and cons team that helped debate both sides of the argument, even playing devil’s advocate when we came to the conclusion that some of the delivery apps’ practices are unethical in nature. My group came to the conclusion that delivery apps like these need to be more clear with both the restaurant providers and the customers to make a more transparent experience from top to bottom while agreeing that they should seek to minimize fees and make them more evident for both parties at sign up and purchase. Furthermore, we agreed that some of the delivery app practices are not illegal in nature, but rather just unethical which led to good introspection about our moral compass and how we would approach a situation like this.”

This discussion sparked great conversation between all of the Fowler Scholars who were able to participate in the debate and share their ideas with each other. These business minded discussions are great practice for applicable real world business skills. 

Connor Lamp, Fowler Scholar, interviews Sedillo.