News Article

Ed and Lynn Hogan will provide a perpetual gift of $250,000 per year for Gonzaga University’s Hogan Entrepreneurial Leadership Program. The landmark contribution comes to Gonzaga from the Hogan Family Foundation.

“This extraordinarily generous gift will go a long way toward ensuring that the Hogan Entrepreneurial Leadership Program reaches its goal of becoming the premiere entrepreneurial program in the nation,” said Gonzaga President Rev. Robert J. Spitzer, S.J. “The Hogans’ support has been – and will always be – the heart of this program.”

This leadership gift will provide a perpetual base for the program and will draw additional sources of support as the program grows in prominence. Endowment proceeds will pay for more than two-thirds of the program’s operating expenses and scholarships. The program has been built entirely through external money, said Hogan Program Director Paul Buller.

“I believe that entrepreneurs are the vital catalyst for world peace, progress and prosperity,” said Ed Hogan. In addition to teaching entrepreneurial skills, he said the Hogan Program “motivates students to be more perceptive of changes in the world, so that they create enterprises needed by our current society.”

The Hogan Family Foundation committed to an initial $150,000 annual gift to start the program, which quickly became a $3 million campaign pledge for annual program support and $750,000 to build the Hogan Wing of the Jepson Center. With the growth and success of the program, the Foundation’s commitment has grown to $250,000 per year.

Ed Hogan was one of nine children born to Irish immigrants. He grew up during the Great Depression and flew in the Naval Air Corps toward the end of World War II. After the war, he was a commercial pilot until 1959, when he and Lynn scraped together $10,000 to start a travel agency,
Pleasant Travel Service. The Hogans helped to create the Hawaiian tourism market. In 1998, they founded the Hogan Family Foundation to promote travel and tourism as an avenue to world peace.

Rev. Spitzer and Ed Hogan met in 1999 when Rev. Spitzer spoke at a meeting of Catholic business people. Ed sat in the audience that evening and was impressed with what he heard. He approached Rev. Spitzer about an interest he had long wanted to pursue in entrepreneurial
education.

“Within 24 hours, Father Spitzer had a proposal in front of him,” Buller recalled. “It was one of those entrepreneurial sparks that happen between two people.” The Hogan Program opened in September 2000 with 23 students in the first class.

Today, nearly 100 students from many academic majors are enrolled in the four-year undergraduate concentration. Hogan students gain theoretical and hands-on knowledge of creating a business or social enterprise with an emphasis on ethical leadership.

For more information, contact Hogan Program Director Paul Buller at (509) 323-3438, or by e-mail at buller@jepson.gonzaga.edu.