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Former Men's Basketball Captain John Rogers ?80 Wins Woodrow Wilson Award
November 08, 2007 | Men's Basketball
John Rogers '80, a former Princeton men's basketball captain and the founder of the nation's largest minority-run mutual fund firm, has been chosen as Princeton's Woodrow Wilson Award winner for 2007-08. Rogers will receive the award during Alumni Day activities on Sat., Feb. 23.
The Wilson Award is bestowed annually upon an undergraduate alumnus or alumna whose career embodies the call to duty in Wilson's famous speech, "Princeton in the Nation's Service." Also a Princeton graduate, Wilson served as president of the University and as President of the United States.
Rogers is chairman, chief executive officer and chief investment officer of Ariel Capital Management, which he founded in 1983, just three years after graduating from Princeton.
Based in Rogers' hometown of Chicago, Ariel has grown into a widely recognized mutual fund company and money management firm with more than $15.5 billion in assets under management for corporate, public, union and nonprofit organizations. While building the company from two employees to more than 100, Rogers also has demonstrated a deep commitment to socially responsible investing and civic engagement.
Rogers, who majored in economics at Princeton, has also been active in University and alumni affairs. He served as a Princeton trustee from 1990 to 1994 and currently is a member of the Association of Black Princeton Alumni (ABPA), the Princeton Varsity Club board of directors and the Alumni Schools Committee. He is the first African American recipient of the Wilson Award.
"John Rogers is an ideal choice for this year's Woodrow Wilson Award. John's life truly embodies the spirit of Wilson's speech, 'Princeton in the Nation's Service,'" said Kenneth Bruce, a 1983 alumnus and ABPA co-president.
"While John was creating the largest black-owned mutual fund, he was also one of the most important and influential members of so many communities -- the Princeton alumni community, the Chicago community and the financial community," Bruce said. "John's leadership led to the Ariel Education Initiative, which promotes educational activities in economically disadvantaged areas, particularly in Chicago. He also created the Ariel-Schwab Black Investor Survey and Black Investor Summit to investigate and, based upon the results, promote investment in the black community."
Rogers captained the 1979-80 Princeton men's basketball team and led the Tigers to a share of the Ivy League championship that season.
"Our players can look to John Rogers and recognize all of the reasons they themselves decided to come to Princeton," says Princeton head coach Sydney Johnson '97. "He has taken the lessons he learned from being a captain of our basketball team and an Ivy League champion and applied them successfully
to his life's work. He represents us well."
(Portions of this article were written by Eric Qui?ones of Princeton's Office of Communications)