You have given the Fox School a new home and, in the process, have helped to expand the educational opportunities available to our current and future students.
For more than 35 years, Richard (Dick) J. Fox has been a trusted leader at Temple University. In 1999, the Board of Trustees, for which Dick had served as chair for 17 years, recognized him by naming the School of Business and Management in his honor.
A successful businessman, Dick is the founder and chair of The Fox Realty Companies, a building development and real-estate management company in Eastern Pennsylvania that is responsible for such landmarks as the Wachovia Center. Most recently, Dick co-founded and serves as chairman of Planalytics, a business weather intelligence company serving businesses throughout the United States.
Dick continues to advance the missions of the university by serving on the Board of Trustees’ Development Committee, and the Fox School by serving as its founding chair of the Board of Visitors. Through the full commitment of their time, treasure and talent, Dick and his wife Geraldine have been instrumental in the school’s success.
Longtime friends of Temple and the Fox School, Robert and Penny Fox recently named the Dean’s Conference Room in Alter Hall after Robert’s father, Frederic, with a $1 million gift.
Born and raised in Philadelphia, Bob has given generously of his time to many philanthropic endeavors over the years, including serving as a member of the Board of Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania, past president, Board of Trustees and current board member of The Wistar Institute, and director of the Foreign Policy Research Institute.
Bob and his wife Penny created the Frederic Fox lecture series at the Fox School — annual lectures that bring together students, business visionaries and alumni to promote leadership development by engaging in thoughtful and dynamic discussions that have centered on religious, political and business themes.
Mr. Fox has a long and distinguished career in the Philadelphia area in both construction and business. Currently, he is founder and CEO of R.A.F. Industries, a private investment company which acquires and manages a diversified group of operating companies and venture capital investments.
Physician-turned-entrepreneur, Dr. Raza Bokhari, came to the United States from Pakistan in 1991, and took his first job at a start-up pathology lab not far from Main Campus of Temple University, a school he knew little about at the time.
Bokhari became well acquainted with Temple when he earned his Executive MBA from the Fox School of Business.
In 2006, he gave back to his former North Philadelphia neighbor when he pledged $1 million to the school’s Building Fox, Transforming Lives campaign.
In recognition of his gift, the suite housing the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Institute is named after him.
“Like many Temple students, I didn’t come from a family of business people, but Temple helped teach me what I needed to know,” says Bokhari, who is CEO of Parkway Clinical Laboratories and a corporate officer of Rosetta Genomics, Parkway’s parent company.
“I directed my donation to the IEI because it’s there that I gathered the wisdom and strength to transform my entrepreneurial passion into demonstrated business success. The institute is an incubator for bright young people who are tomorrow’s innovators and business leaders.”
Irwin L. Gross, Esq., SBM ’65, continues his longtime commitment to the Fox School with a recent $1 million gift to name the capital markets room in Alter Hall.
Gross has played a leadership role for many years by serving on the Board of Visitors, the volunteer leadership board composed of alumni and friends who lead the industries in which they work. As a member of the board, Gross lends strategic direction and expertise to ensure that the school’s mission remains relevant in the changing climate of business.
Gross currently serves as founder and principal of Ocean Castle Partners, LLC. Previously, he lent his expertise and direction to The Network Connection, SZM Distributors and Amalgamated Technologies, among many other companies.
