| $2 Million Gift from Alumnus to Support Entrepreneur-in-Residence Program and Wharton Fund |
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October 9, 2007, Volume 54, No. 7 |
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The Wharton School announced a $2 million gift from alumnus Robert Haft, W ’74, to establish the Robert Haft Entrepreneur-in-Residence Endowment Fund and to provide other unrestricted funding. Mr. Haft is the founder and chairman of Main Street Lender, and is founder of Morgan Noble, a healthcare investment company.
The majority of the gift, $1.875 million, will be used to endow the fall semester of Wharton’s Entrepreneur-in-Residence Program. This leading program (www.wep.wharton.upenn.edu/EIR/) brings highly accomplished entrepreneurs in marketing, finance, manufacturing, real estate, and services to campus every week to meet with students in one-on-one meetings. Visiting entrepreneurs share their valuable insight and serve as career mentors for students.
“Wharton is making entrepreneurship an important discipline, much as it did for the real estate program a decade ago. Encouraging students to become entrepreneurs is a worthy endeavor for students and for society. Wharton provided me with the knowledge, contacts and confidence to forego a corporate position and start and grow several businesses,” Mr. Haft said.
The other portion of Mr. Haft’s gift will be used to provide unrestricted support of the School. It will be applied to Wharton’s highest priority initiatives across a range of programs.
The Entrepreneur-in-Residence Program, an outreach activity of Wharton Entrepreneurial Programs (WEP), is one of many co-curricular initiatives that reflect WEP’s commitment to supporting entrepreneurship campus-wide. Since its inception, students as diverse as those from the schools of Design, Arts & Science, Medicine and Engineering have joined Wharton undergraduates and MBAs as participants in the program. In its six years, over 100 entrepreneurs have contributed to the program to the benefit of nearly 1,000 Penn students.
Mr. Haft received his undergraduate degree at Penn with a concentration in finance. He was recently named as a member of the Wharton School’s Undergraduate Executive Board. |
