Gift will help launch new program for entrepreneurs

Joseph Neubauer, chairman and chief executive officer of Philadelphia-based Aramark, a global leader in the managed services industry, has made a $1.5 million personal gift to spearhead entrepreneurial studies at the Graduate School of Business. Neubauer, a University Trustee, is a 1965 graduate of the GSB.

The Neubauer gift is among those to the University's Campaign for the Next Century. As of March 30, total gifts to the campaign had surpassed $630 million, the most ever raised by a Chicago-area institution in a single capital campaign. The goal for the campaign, which continues through June 30, is $650 million. The largest fundraising effort in University history, the campaign is concentrating on raising endowment for faculty support and student financial aid, and on construction funds for an expanded athletics, recreation and fitness complex.

The gift has established the Neubauer Family Chair in Entrepreneurial Studies, which sets the stage for a program that will expand and coordinate aspects of entrepreneurship currently spread across disciplines such as business policy, marketing, operations and finance at the GSB.

"This is a magnificent gift," said Robert Hamada, Dean of the GSB. "With it we hope to launch not only a new program for the school but a unique resource for entrepreneurs worldwide. While several business schools have begun offering entrepreneurship programs and courses, none of those offerings have the empirical foundation the Chicago program will seek to develop."

Speaking at last spring's GSB convocation, Neubauer said, "The world doesn't need more wealthy men and women. It needs more men and women who know how to create wealth for others."

"I do not believe entrepreneurial behavior is random," Neubauer said in a later interview. "My own personal experience with the men and women who are creating opportunity for others today is that they operate from a highly complex model: equal parts intuition and analysis, instinct and reflection, subjectivity and objectivity.

"I want one of the world's premier graduate business schools to define the relationship among the key components of that model so that we can help increase the levels of hope and harmony in our society."

Neubauer is a member of the school's business advisory council. He also has chaired the Rosenwald Fellows Program and served on the Capital Gifts Planning Committee and the Dean's Fund and Special Gifts committees.

While Neubauer developed his expertise at blue-chip corporations such as Chase Manhattan, Pepsico and Wilson, his sympathies are entrepreneurial. In 1984, realizing that he wanted a more active role in Aramark's destiny, he led the company's managers in a leveraged buyout.