Wharton: $10 Million Goergen Entrepreneurial Management Program

The Wharton School has created the Goergen Entrepreneurial Management Program with a $10 million gift from Robert B. Goergen, chairman and CEO of Blyth Industries, a leading manufacturer of candles, candle accessories, and home fragrance products.

The gift, one of the largest ever made to to support an entrepreneurial program at a U.S. business school, will establish a Robert B. Goergen Professorship and sponsor Goergen Fellowships for faculty to teach new courses needed to meet growing demand, according to Wharton's Dean Thomas P. Gerrity, who called the program a "cornerstone of management education at Wharton...critical to our plans for the 21st Century."

A worldwide search will be conducted for a program director.

Wharton established the world's first integrated curriculum of entrepreneurial studies in 1973. It now has 18 scholars and practicing entrepreneurs offering 22 courses to some 2,000 students and executives annually, and more than 700 students now have major concentrations in entrepreneurial studies.

Mr. Goergen, a 1962 Wharton MBA graduate, is a highly successful entrepreneur in his own right, transforming Blyth Industries from a $3 million regional manufacturer of grocery store and religious candles into a company that designs, manufactures and markets candles internationally. Blyth Industries reported $500 million in revenues in 1996 and employs 2,200 at the parent company and two subsidiaries, Candle Corporation of America and Party Lite Gifts. Before building Blyth Industries, Mr. Goergen held management positions at a number of leading organizations including McCann-Erickson, McKinsey & Co., and Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette.

"Wharton provided me with many of the tools and skills responsible for my business track record," said Mr. Goergen, adding that "Given Wharton's unrivaled reputation in fostering [the entrepreneurial] spirit, the gift is intended to help the School prepare the next generation of business leaders by adding depth and breadth to its entrepreneurial management faculty."

Among the specific five-year goals of the program:

-- From a news release of Wharton Public Affairs


Almanac

Volume 44 Number 1
July 15, 1997


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