Alumni Who Pay It Forward Every Year
Babson maintains a generous community whose reasons for giving are as diverse as its alumni, many of whom donate to the College every year.
Those annual contributions—no matter the amount—drive Babson’s fundraising efforts to improve and enhance every aspect of the campus experience, including academics and athletics, scholarships and facilities, and the endowment and annual operating budget. Annual donors ensure that the College has a consistent and reliable income stream that allows it to adapt to the ever-changing needs of the community.
Giving to Babson: Learn more about supporting the College
For these three alumni donors who contribute annually, giving to Babson comes down to supporting and sustaining a place that feels like home, long after graduation.
Creating More Opportunities
Robert Brewster ’63 has donated to Babson for 60 consecutive years, starting shortly after graduation—because, as he puts it, “Babson came through for me when I needed to get into college, and I’m thankful they did.”
Although Brewster eventually enjoyed a thriving career in accounting and management consulting, working with clients such as Harley-Davidson, he was once a wide-eyed college student at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He intended to study engineering, as many students did during the Sputnik-era Cold War.
“I was going to be a civil engineer. Halfway through the first semester, during an orientation class, I saw civil engineers traipsing around the Brazilian jungles, building bridges and roads. I said, ‘That’s not what I want to do. I want an office job,’ ” he recalls, laughing.
Instead, he set his sights on becoming a certified public accountant and planned to transfer to a school that offered business courses. On the advice of a friend, he toured Babson and met with the dean of admissions.
“The dean said: ‘I’ve got good news and bad news. If you want to enroll, you can. We’ll bring you in right away. The bad news is, we don’t have any more rooms on campus, and you’ll have to live off campus until a room becomes available,’ ” he remembers.
Brewster happily took the deal (and moved onto campus the following semester). After graduation, he promptly landed interviews with seven top accounting firms, fielding offers from several. Now retired and splitting his time between Florida and his longtime home in suburban New Jersey, he is delighted to return the good fortune.
“I think that people who don’t have the money to attend college should be given the opportunity. That’s why I always give to the scholarship funds,” he says. “Babson is a good school, and I’m thankful to them for helping me out.”
Supporting Success
Like Brewster, Emily Mariani Consilvio ’01 experienced a sense of promise and warmth on campus. As a student, she enjoyed a work-study job at the Office of Class Deans. The office was full of “phenomenal women,” she recalls. “They were highly educated, competent, compassionate. Every day, I loved going to work. They became like family, even though my family was only a half-hour away in Medfield.”
Today, she has her own family, including four young children and her husband, Joe Consilvio ’00, MBA’11. Time is at a premium. But, when Babson calls, she answers as a volunteer or as a donor—and as a shopper. Mariani Consilvio is a devoted customer of the Babson alumni store, Babson Street. Fittingly, she works in the corporate gifting arena, and her business, The Putney Group, takes its name from Putney Hall.
“The school is so much more than the curriculum, which is world-class. It’s the community. It’s the physical campus, full of such natural beauty, and also the people who fill it.”
Emily Mariani Consilvio ’01
Mariani Consilvio happily supports Babson alumni by stocking up on clothing, dog leashes, puzzles, and more. She has a professional relationship with Bombas socks—founded by Babson graduates Andrew Heath MBA’12 and David Heath ’05—and, when the store began to offer branded versions, “I ordered about 50 pairs. The alumni office was probably like, ‘This woman’s crazy!’ ” she says, laughing. “But they’re fabulous.”
Most of all, she is happy to give back, whether it’s socks or scholarships.
“The school is so much more than the curriculum, which is world-class. It’s the community. It’s the physical campus, full of such natural beauty, and also the people who fill it,” she says. “The education outside of the classroom was equal to what I learned inside.”
Finding a Sense of Place
Candace Armand ’10 echoes that sense of homecoming. She discovered Babson through the Posse Foundation as a teenager on Long Island. As she learned more about Posse, which provides full-tuition leadership scholarships, she was struck by Babson’s reputation for innovation and supporting female scholars.
“What stood out to me were two things: One, Babson’s continued reign as number one in the world for entrepreneurship. Also, they had a women’s leadership program. I thought: How amazing would it be to go to a school that’s intentional about developing its female leaders?” she says.
Today, Armand serves on the Babson Alumni Advisory Board (BAAB) and its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) committee. And she supports the Fund for Babson, various DEI programs, and the BAAB Scholarship.
“Having been a Posse Scholar myself—and being able to attend Babson because of the generosity of alums—it’s really important to pay that forward,” she says. “Babson is a place where you can chart your own journey, as well as find community and support. My Posse was my support system, and in terms of the environment, Babson felt like home.”
“Having been a Posse Scholar myself—and being able to attend Babson because of the generosity of alums—it’s really important to pay that forward.”
Candace Armand ’10
After graduation, Armand worked at Goldman Sachs in New York, onboarding institutional clients such as investment firms, hedge funds, and asset managers. After obtaining an MBA from Duke University, she became a management consultant with PwC. As part of the customer strategy and experience team, she focuses on helping pharma and life sciences companies transform their operations by leveraging new technology to increase speed and efficiency. She leaned on Babson alumni for advice as she contemplated her next steps.
“I wanted to have an impact in a different way,” she says. “There was a point at which I hit a career inflection, and it was my Babson network who really helped me determine and charter my path forward.”
This isn’t her only job. She also runs a personal business, helping students to develop their soft skills, such as effective communication and networking. In fact, she might bring her workshops to Babson—stay tuned.
She lives by a mission. “It’s very simple: My mission is just to leave my mark on the world by helping people, and if giving is a way that I can actively do that, then that’s quite all right by me,” she says. “Now, I’m intent on paying it forward, especially as I continue to see the value of my own degree grow.”
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