Giving to Smith

Meet the Donors

Al Carey '74: Making an Impact at UM

Al Carey's connection to the University of Maryland began with athletics. A Long Island native, he was a heavily recruited track star who chose to come to Maryland, despite the fact that the university could only award him a partial scholarship during his freshman year.

Today, Carey '74, is making sure there's more scholarship money to go around, whether the student recipients are athletes or those with extreme financial need. As president and chief executive officer of PepsiCo's Frito-Lay North America division, Carey has shepherded several large corporate gifts to the university. He also gave enough of his own money to fund a four-year scholarship for a track athlete, part of an effort to increase that program's scholarships from two to 12.5 a year.

In 2004, Carey also made a generous personal gift with a big emotional impact. During a University of Maryland College Park Foundation Trustees meeting, Carey and fellow board member Bob Facchina '77 heard the story of a young woman who was considering dropping out just shy of her senior year. Her father had cancer and had been forced to leave work, and the family could no longer afford their daughter's tuition. That night, Carey and Facchina decided to split the remaining cost of her Maryland education, about $12,000, and donate the money to the foundation, which supports an emergency tuition program. The young woman has since graduated and become a teacher.

"It's probably the best $6,000 I've spent in my life," Carey says. "The letters we got from the student's family were really incredible."

Corporate Supporters
Carey continues his gift-giving efforts, spearheading PepsiCo's corporate contributions to the Robert H. Smith School of Business and the College of Education. He got involved with education's project after a former dean convinced him to give to it not once, but twice.

Run through the Maryland Institute for Minority Achievement and Urban Education, the project connected local school officials and university educators and greatly improved college attendance rates and college scholarship awards made to students in Bladensburg, Md., schools.

Though the institute has been up and running since 2001, it doesn't yet have the resources needed to make the larger impact officials envision. Earlier this year, they returned to some initial investors and sought out others who could help expand daily operations. Among others who committed to the new fundraising initiative were Doctors Community Hospital and Gary Michael/NAI The Michael Companies Inc., which each gave $100,000 to hire an executive director.

"I think it is extremely important for an organization such as Doctors Community Hospital to reinvest back into its community...," says Philip B. Down, the hospital's president and a member of the University of Maryland College Park Foundation. "As this program continues to mature, I want to ensure that it is self-sustaining and continues to benefit our youth and contribute to an improved quality of life in Prince George's County."

The idea is to make permanent the institute's outreach efforts, which include school-specific teacher training initiatives, mentoring and after-school and other support programs. Carey is also working on providing an endowed chair through the PepsiCo Foundation, which would enable the institute to research, implement and analyze the success of support programs in Prince George's schools.