Today, Trustee Ken Taubes, MBA ’84, serves as the chief investment officer and executive vice president of Amundi Asset Management, U.S. There he oversees all investment activity, including portfolio management, research, and trading for the $92 billion global investment company.
But when he earned his undergraduate degree in 1980 from Utica University—a key “stepping stone” to the career he wanted—he was the first member of his family to graduate from college.
He needed loans to get the degree, and then worked full time to pay for his MBA at Suffolk—but back then, college was more affordable. “The real cost of going to college today is much more expensive than it was back in the late 1970s and early ’80s,” Taubes says.
That’s why he and his wife, Wendy, established an endowed financial aid scholarship at Suffolk to support students showing academic promise who could otherwise not afford to attend college. In 2021, the Taubeses made another substantial contribution to the fund. “We deeply believe that, like Suffolk’s mission, education is one of the principal ways in which people can change their trajectory and achieve their goals,” says Taubes, a member of the Sawyer Business School Dean’s Cabinet and the Finance Advisory Board, who has also been a featured speaker at University events and on CNBC.
Taubes hopes the gift can bring far-off dreams within reach for some first-generation students, or at least make the difficult more doable. He hopes that others who share this mission will also contribute to the scholarship fund.
“Education is transformational,” Taubes says. “And we need to give people who have the ability to do well with an education the chance to get one.”
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Photography by Michael J. Clarke
FEATURES
| Fall 2022
By Jon Gorey
