URI alumni Kent and Diane Fannon met as students in the ’70s and went on to achieve successful business careers. Now they’re giving today’s CBA students a career boost with their recent $500,000 gift, which establishes The Kent and Diane Fannon Endowed Career Fund.

Seizing career opportunities is the inspiration behind the new fund. The creative purpose of their gift and the fact that it’s establishing an endowed fund means that students will benefit for many generations to come.

“Kent and Diane Fannon’s generous endowment gives us an unparalleled opportunity to improve and enhance our career services offerings to our students,” said College of Business Administration Dean Maling Ebrahimpour. “We are grateful for their gift, which will help our students to be better prepared in an increasingly competitive global job market.”

The gift was inspired in part by the College’s Alumni Career Day, which the Fannons, who graduated in 1974, have made the trip from Texas to participate in for 10 years. Some 100 alumni return to the Kingston campus for Career Day, a successful and sought after event each year, to meet with business students, participate in panels, and network. This popular day devoted to career planning struck a chord with the couple who knew that career paths are not always set in stone.

“We were extremely impressed with the URI students we met and their focus and interest in a wide range of things,” said Kent, who is a partner with Chartwell Partners, an executive search firm.

Kent, who also graduated from the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business in 1976, the same year he and Diane would marry, assumed he would work for American Airlines for 30 years and retire.

“The opposite happened,” he said.

After 11 years with American Airlines including internships and employment and a move to Dallas, TX., he branched into different industries and, as a result, came to see a career as a step-by-step process that can take you in a number of directions.

Diane also thought she had her career path figured out upon graduation.

“I envisioned I’d be a school teacher forever,” said Diane, who graduated with a degree in elementary education and English – the latter of which would take her far away from the classroom and into the world of advertising. Her first advertising assignment was marketing Star Wars action figures. Decades later, she’s a principal at The Richards Group in Dallas, the nation’s largest independently owned ad agency with marquee clients like Home Depot and Chick-Fil-A.

“It was the opportunities afforded me along the way that make me feel like I want to give back to URI and help students get a fulfilling job and make a career of it,” she said, “and not be afraid to try something different.”

Kent chairs the College of Business Administration Advisory Council and Diane is a member of the Council. Diane also is a member of URI’s Branding Steering Committee and the 125th Anniversary Steering Committee.

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