Mark and Tammy Strome of Pacific Palisades donated $11 million on behalf of the Strome Family Foundation to Old Dominion University (ODU) in Virginia, Mark Strome’s alma mater, late last month. The donation, the largest alumnus gift to ODU in history, established the Strome College of Business and the Strome Center for Entrepreneurship.
Growing up on a working farm in Western New York and scraping by with low grades through high school, Mark Strome said in his speech at the dedication of the Strome College of Business on September 26 that he made it into ODU thanks to a “mysterious angel [on the other end of the phone] who then somehow changed the rejection letter to a probationary acceptance letter.”
Photo: Tracey Morris
Mark is clearly as humble as they come about his background.
“I had no great intellect,” he continued. “It was a desperate fear of failure and my work ethic that saved me…Inside I am still the unremarkable boy who was raised in unremarkable surroundings.”
Mark’s entrepreneurial spirit and career as a hedge fund manager combined with Tammy’s career as a clinical psychologist and the couple’s passion for assisting programs on education, medical research and the arts via the Strome Family Foundation, all led up to their will to set up others for success.
Tammy Strome told the Palisadian-Post that she and her husband were initially asked by ODU to “give a substantial gift” to the university when a naming opportunity came about for the campus’ College of Business. But the duo wanted more than just their name on a building—they wanted to make a difference.
“We wanted to find something that was meaningful to our family,” she said.
The couple agreed they would make the donation on the condition that they also have a hand in developing a new entrepreneurial curriculum, which subsequently awakened the need for a place where students and members of the community can start their own businesses—thus the Strome Center for Entrepreneurship was born.
“Entrepreneurs create jobs and when a person has a job he or she is empowered and feels the dignity of being able to provide for his/her families,” Mark Strome said in his dedication speech. “This is all part of a vast, virtuous circle that is instigated and fed by entrepreneurial activity.”
The new educational program involves hands-on training for budding business people, collaboration with mentors, feedback on start-ups and an Entrepreneurship 101 class available to students of every major.
“I want to be realistic,” Mark Strome clarified in his speech. “I do not think the Strome Center will manufacture entrepreneurs but I am hopeful that it will be a gateway for those with the right stuff—those entrepreneurs in waiting. I hope they will find help, experience, and some valuable tools to lubricate and accelerate their journey as entrepreneurs.”
Tammy and Mark Strome live in the Palisades with two of their five children and are active at St. Matthew’s.
Visit Stromefamilyfoundation.org.
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