Olin School of Business celebrates distinguished alumni

Annual Distinguished Alumni Award also honors the former dean and his wife

The Olin School of Business will honor the achievements of four alumni May 3 at the school’s annual dinner at the Ritz-Carlton St. Louis in Clayton. Business school Dean Mahendra Gupta also will present the Dean’s Medal to Stuart Greenbaum and his wife, Elaine, A.B. ’60.

Alumni awards are bestowed annually to recognize those who have achieved distinction in their fields and for embodying the qualities of leadership, integrity and commitment that the Olin School of Business seeks to instill in its students. This year’s recipients of the Distinguished Alumni Awards are E. William Gillula, M.B.A. ’73, Lynn E. Gorguze, M.B.A. ’86, Lewis A. Levey, M.B.A. ’67 and Lin-Kuei Jackson Ling, M.B.A. ’04.

Although Stuart Greenbaum served as dean of the business school from 1995-2005, the couple is being honored with the Dean’s Medal for its exceptional dedication and service to the Olin School. Greenbaum’s accomplishments as dean are numerous. He enlarged and strengthened the faculty, oversaw the building of the Charles F. Knight Executive Education Center and helped initiate Total Quality Schools, a joint program with the George Warren Brown School of Social Work. He also led successful efforts to establish the E.M.B.A. partnership with Fudan University in Shanghai.

Meanwhile, Elaine Greenbaum, an economist, was finding her own ways of enriching the school. Her passion for education made her the perfect partner in the Total Quality Schools effort. Her relationship with Olin students, faculty, staff and alumni fostered a culture of caring at the Olin School that became central to its identity. Outside of Olin, she served as chair of the Down Syndrome Association of Greater St. Louis and helped launch the Down Syndrome Center at Children’s Hospital.

After earning an M.B.A. from Olin in 1973, Gillula has only had two employers. He started with Mark Twain Banks as a loan officer and within a few years was bank president. In 1979, Gillula moved to the holding company, Mark Twain Bancshares, where he assumed the role of senior vice president and chief financial officer. While still a loan officer, Gillula had contact with a new company called Computer Sales International. In 1984, he joined his former client as the company’s senior vice president and quickly progressed up the ranks eventually becoming president, the position he currently holds, with the renamed CSI Leasing Inc.

As president of Cameron Holdings Corporation, Gorguze took a family-owned vinyl dip molding company and built a private equity conglomerate that manages an array of businesses worldwide. She and her father, Vincent Gorguze, former chief operating officer of Emerson Electric, established the business in 1993. Ten years later, the company’s combined revenues are approximately $250 million. Among Cameron’s holdings have been manufacturers of playground equipment, cutting tools, copper and fiber optic cable for the audio/video and data industries, graphite golf club shafts as well as a packer of food, pharmaceutical and industrial products.

Levey was a founder and managing partner of Paragon Group Inc., a real estate development and management firm established in 1973. The company expanded and went public in 1994 when it managed more than 300 office and industrial buildings, shopping centers and multifamily residential communities in 40 metropolitan areas covering 18 states. In 1997, Paragon Group merged with Camden property trust, which today is a $6 billion company on the New York Stock Exchange. Levey has been a director of the National Multi Housing Council and served the Urban Land Institute in various leadership capacities. He is also actively involved in the Center of Research, Technology and Entrepreneurial Expertise.

Ling fell into his business when a real-estate client of his couldn’t pay a debt and offered to transfer ownership of his small commercial lighting factory to Ling. The business struggled for a long time before Ling decided to change the company’s strategies. He moved production to Shanghai from Taiwan, expanded his product into neon signage, cut costs and took the business international. Now Enhance Holding Corporation is the largest neon-lighting manufacturer in the world, with offices worldwide and clients such as Anheuser-Busch, Madden Inc. (Miller), J Group (Heineken), Gambrinus (Corona) and Spencer Gifts Inc., to name a few.