The Johnson School Annual Report 2007–2008 - Johnson Graduate ...

The Johnson School Annual Fund:
Building lasting value
THE JOHNSON SCHOOL ANNUAL REPORT 2007–08
Investing in the Very Best
From a 20-year stint with
Procter and Gamble to Internet
marketing, with terms as
president of Dr. Pepper Co.
and Fidelity Investments, as
CEO of Schenley Industries,
and managing partner of Host
Communications in between,
Chuck Jarvie ’58, MBA ’59, has
enjoyed a successful and varied
career. Now a partner in Beta
Capital Group, LLC, a private
equity firm in Dallas, Texas,
Jarvie recalls his years at the
then-new business school at
Cornell.
“I was privileged to be in
with some very bright students and really good professors,”
Jarvie says. “Hal Bierman was terrific. So were Gilmore
“At Cornell I learned how to approach
problems and identify and work with
good people. There’s no substitute for good
people.”
and Nielsen. Hal taught me that I should never go into
accounting—for the good of the profession. But Rex Peterson
was one of his best students, and I teamed up with Rex for
many years.” This typified Jarvie’s experience at Cornell: “I
learned how to approach problems and identify and work
with good people. There’s no substitute for good people.”
Jarvie puts that belief into practice by designating his
gifts to the Johnson School for activities that strengthen its
chances of recruiting the best students.
“If you get the top people in, and you give them a good
education, they’re going to have the most success,” he says,
“and those alumni will contribute the most in terms of
time and money. It’s a circular process not always widely
understood.”
EMBA Class of ’08 Gift Supports
Annual Fund
The EMBA Class of ’08 directed its
gift to the Annual Fund because “the
things the Annual Fund does are
really the things that make the school
work,” says class president Shaown
Nandi ’97, MBA ’08. Case in point:
The school used money from the
Annual Fund to put automated
defibrillators around Sage Hall.
When one of Nandi’s classmates
had a cardiac event in the atrium,
a Johnson School staff member was able to use a nearby
defibrillator to save his life.
The event was especially meaningful to the Class of ’08,
which Nandi calls “incredibly tight-knit. EMBA students take
every class together; we room together when we’re at IBM
Palisades and the Statler so we really bonded socially. We just
had a barbecue that people flew in and drove hours to attend.
“The things the Annual Fund does are
really the things that make the school work.”
Sixty out of 64 of us attended graduation, and we had 100
percent participation in the class gift.”
Nandi, who graduated high school at 16, is unabashedly
dedicated to his alma mater. “I grew up at Cornell,” he says,
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