Prudential and alumni honored at annual awards dinner

Rutgers Business School honored six alumni for their success, engagement and willingness to fund student programs and scholarships during a recent dinner at the Rutgers Club.

Receiving awards for 2024 were: Keith Banks, Lifetime Achievement Award; Jeffrey Mraz, Distinguished Alumni Award; Robert Platek, Honorary Business Excellence Award; Omotayo Okusanya, Alumni Service Award; Aisha Khan and Michael Pavlo, Alumni Rising Star Award. An inaugural Corporate Partner Award was given to Prudential.

The award recipients, collectively, demonstrate the range of roles and impact alumni can have. They teach, recruit students for internships and jobs within their companies. They fund scholarships and help to influence curriculum. Some have given commencement speeches and others serve as advisors to the dean.

“They all have made a significant contribution to the success of Rutgers Business School,” Dean Lei Lei said as the ceremony opened. Lei cited recent student achievements and top rankings and described the school’s rising preeminence as a “joint effort” with alumni.

A trademark of the awards dinner is a performance by the Rutgers Glee Club. A sliver of the club’s 85 members filed into the Rutgers Club and stood before the assembled guests, performing a series of familiar songs.

When the Glee Club sung the Rutgers fight song and the university’s Alma Mater, many alumni and faculty members in the crowd sang along from their seats. It was a spirited start to a ceremony marked by school pride and the impact it can have.

The awards dinner is hosted by the Office of Alumni and Corporate Engagement, led by Associate Dean Sharon Lydon who served as the event’s master of ceremonies. While the alumni are important to Rutgers Business School, it was clear from the remarks of the award recipients that being involved with the Rutgers community is also a point of pride for them. 

Aisha Khan, an MBA alumna, said she has taught at Rutgers for six semesters after two of her professors persuaded her to do it. “It quickly became one of my life passions,” she said after receiving one of two Rising Star Awards.

In fact, Khan, an executive director of global commerce client acelleration at Group M, said when people ask her what she does, the first thing she says is, “I teach at Rutgers.”

Award recipients, Michael Pavlo and Jeff Mraz, expressed similar appreciation for the relationships they’ve formed with Rutgers Business School and the sense of fulfillment they get from being engaged.  “I am constantly energized to support RBS,” said Mraz, an audit and assurance partner at Deloitte. 

Bill Pappas, managing director of PGIM Private Capital, received the inaugural Corporate Partner Award on behalf of Prudential. A Rutgers graduate, Pappas recalled how he approached Rutgers Business School professor Ben Sopranzetti with the idea of creating a recruiting pipeline between the company and the business school.

At the time, he said, the business school had just started. The quality of its students was unproven and there was no track record of hiring analysts from Rutgers. “It was a good risk to take,” he said. 

What resulted is “a great partnership” and “a nice bridge,” Pappas said. Today, Prudential’s workforce includes hundreds of Rutgers graduates.

Prudential’s engagement reflects more than its recruitment of Rutgers talent. The company is involved in mentoring, influencing the development of new curriculum, and its employees sit on boards for the student organization, Women BUILD, as well as the Center for Real Estate, Pappas said. The company is also a sponsor of the Honors Living-Learning Community at Rutgers University-Newark.

Award recipient Rob Platek was part of the first class of students to graduate from Rutgers Business School and went on to become global head of credit at MSD Partners. Platek was lauded for his support of the Road to Wall Street Program and for remaining a champion of DEI even as initiatives elsewhere have come under attack. Platek has worked closely with Charles Brown, assistant dean of the Office of Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Access.

In his remarks, Platek described the impact of a $3 million gift from MSD Partners created for underserved students. The MSD Scholars program provided 22 students with scholarships last year. Another 15 received scholarships for the current academic year. The room burst into applause as Platek introduced Goodness Ifesanya, a rising senior and one of the MSD Scholars.

Omotayo Okusanya, who received the Alumni Service Award, described his efforts to help Rutgers Business School students prepare for careers on Wall Street. The Road to Wall Street Program – Okusanya sits on the program’s board -- has grown from an initial cohort of 20 undergraduates to its current 70-student cohort. Students graduating from the program continue to have a 100 percent job placement rate, he told the guests.

Okusanya, a managing director at Duetsche Bank, expressed a pride that was echoed through the night by recipients. “I might be a Harvard (MBA) alumnus," he said, "but my blood runs scarlet red.” 

“With all of our collective efforts,” he told the guests and fellow award recipients, “RBS keeps getting better and better.”

The celebration ended with another trademark: a champaign toast. As the award recipients raised their glasses, Lydon said, “This is what excellence looks like.”

See scenes from the awards dinner: