“This awareness encourages the Grossman School of Business and this venerable university to continue to maintain new vitality. More specifically, it aims to show how businesses can generate wealth and create social well-being. I urge you to strengthen my research and educational efforts. You are so much for this honor.” In these words, Dr. Srinivas Venugopal was first awarded by Donald and Gabriel McCree. We concluded that we had accepted a business professor.
During an intimate ceremony, the University of Vermont (UVM) Grossman School of Business (GSB) invested Dr. Srinivas Venugopal in the prestigious position on January 31, 2025. UVM president Patricia Prelock and positional generous donor Don McCree ’83.
The position of donated faculty is part of the latest example of McCrees’ generosity and commitment. As part of their growing legacy at the university, this commitment is the GSB’s national outstanding business school by expanding the top-ranked MBA (SI-MBA) and graduate programs of accountants (MACC) It further strengthens its reputation as one of the following. As an area of excellence in entrepreneurship, sustainable business, and family business.
The appointment to a given position is one of the highest academic honors that the University of Vermont can award to its faculty. Donated chairs and professors allow universities to recognize and celebrate academic achievements, and further encourage academic and service excellence. The donated faculty position is a homage to the holders and a lasting legacy for the donors who establish them.
Srinivas Venugopal, Ph.D., The Donald and Gabrielle McCree are Professors of Business
Dr. Srinivas Venugopal received his Bachelor’s degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Anna University, India in 2005. Before pursuing his studies, he was a leading technology-based social venture in Tamil Nadu, India, with a focus on providing education services. Low-income, rural consumers. Dr. Venugopal is also the founder of a nonprofit organization called “Diya.” It offers supplementary education in the urban slums of Chennai, India. He received his MBA and a PhD. Marketing at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He joined UVM in 2016 and was promoted to tenure associate professor in 2022. In 2024 he was appointed academic director of the SI-MBA program.
Research Doctor at Venugopal demonstrates how social innovation can serve as a powerful tool in providing solutions to enhance happiness in the context of poverty. Dr. Venugopal has published 20 articles on social innovation based on data from the diverse contexts of poverty across five continents, and has received awards from the American Marketing Association and the Consumer Research Association . He continues to teach courses focused on sustainable marketing and sustainable brand marketing, and his impact at Grossman School has become immeasurable. For his third year in a row, he has earned Professor of the Year from a SI-MBA student.
Dr. Srinivas Venugopal embody the passion of the Grossman School of Business to help build a better organization and a better society, and we are proud to be able to count him among our faculty members. . He is a typical teacher scholar, whose research and scholarships inform and enrich his education and guidance.
His work makes a difference to the Grossman Business School of Business at the University of Vermont. McCree’s donated Professor Medallion represents his continued pursuit of excellence in his field.
The inheritance of donations
Don and Gabby McCree’s generous gifts founded McCree’s professor of donated business. Their vision and commitment to supporting business education will have lasting impact. This gift will allow students at Grossman’s school to learn from outstanding academics who can enhance UVM’s academic reputation in the field of marketing and sustainable business. The owner of this chair will impact hundreds of lives through his education, research, mentoring and outreach to the community.
Don McCree graduated from the University of Vermont in 1983 with a major in economics and political science. His career includes JPMorgan Chase for over 30 years in a variety of leadership roles. Since 2015 he has been a senior executive at Citizens Financial Group and currently holds the position of Senior Vice Chair and Director of Commercial Banks. Don is also an exemplary volunteer leader at the University of Vermont and the UVM Foundation. He has served on the UVM Foundation board since its founding in 2011 and on the UVM Board of Directors since 2014. Additionally, Don is one of the founding managers of the newly established University of Vermont Investment Management Company.
Don’s volunteer leadership is reflected in that of his wife, Gabby. Gabby is a past chairman and a current member of the board of directors of her alma mater, Mary Baldwin University. Gabby has established several volunteer leadership positions in her church, is a high school teacher at the Hunts Point Alliance Center in the Bronx, and a longtime adult education teacher in English as a second language.
Together they have been the leading philanthropists at the University of Vermont since 2006, founded the McCree Family Endowment Scholarship Fund, and have made positive contributions to financial needs, academic achievement records and community service. It has benefited. During the university’s Moving Mountains fundraising campaign, Don and Gabby decided to expand their charity legacy by establishing business professors for Donald and Gabriel McClee at Grossman Business School.
This professor’s gift is another example of generosity that has internationally improved the quality of the school’s reputation as one of the top schools for entrepreneurship, family business and sustainable business.
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Funding for the Grossman School of Business is the main focus of the University of Vermont Foundation, a nonprofit organization established to secure and manage private support for the benefit of the University of Vermont. To inquire about gifts to the Grossman School of Business, contact Alex Brady at (770) 842-1510 or alex.brady@uvm.edu (770) 842-1510 (770). For more information on donor impacts, such as Steven Grossman and the UVM Foundation work, visit www.uvmfoundation.org.
Event photos by Andy Dabak.
