07-01-2022
Many of those affiliated with the Dr. Cornell A. Bell Business Opportunity Program (BOP) know Rene Lewin as a member of its leadership council. He’s also one of its most ardent supporters from a giving standpoint.
Lewin is president of RRL Capital, LLC, a venture capital company that invests in business startups, and serves on the executive committee of the Tamiami Angel Fund located in Naples, Florida, which also invests in business startups. He currently serves on the board of directors of Wellbox and SafeKeeping, two of the nearly 30 companies where he has invested.
Lewin retired as senior vice president of human resources for Wyeth in 2008. In this role, he was responsible for the planning and implementation of worldwide employee policies and programs, including compensation and benefits, employee relations, labor relations, equal employment policies and programs, recruiting, management training and development, and corporate security.
Prior to joining Wyeth in 1994, Lewin was employed by Eli Lilly and Company for 24 years, where he held a variety of executive positions including president of Eli Lilly Canada, executive director of corporate affairs, and executive director of human resources for Eli Lilly’s pharmaceutical business.
Lewin graduated from Purdue with a BS in industrial management and received his MBA from Butler University. Lewin also was a visiting professor at Purdue’s Krannert School, where he taught in the MBA program for four years following his retirement from Wyeth. In 2016, he received the Alumni of the Year award from the Krannert School of Management.
Lewin and his wife Karen are trustees of the Rene and Karen Lewin Charitable Fund, from which they direct their philanthropy particularly focused on education and hunger relief. They have endowed the Rene and Karen Leadership Scholarship at Purdue University, which supports three to five scholarships a year to students attending the Krannert School, and have also provided annual gifts to BOP.
“Our philanthropy began with our retirement and estate planning,” Lewin says. “We gave a small amount to lots of different organizations, but wanted to focus our gifts, so creating a charitable fund made sense.”
Giving to Krannert scholarships also fits with their philanthropic goals, so Lewin began donating his yearly earnings from teaching in the MBA program to that end. “We got great feedback from that,” he says. “We received letters of gratitude from the students that really made us feel good about what we were doing, so we decided to make it a gift in perpetuity by endowing the scholarship fund.”
The scholarships are intended to help support women, underrepresented minorities, and those in financial need who are from the state of Indiana.
Lewin began providing additional funding to BOP through his role as a member of the Dean’s Advisory Council (DAC). “We knew there were operational needs that weren’t being fulfilled with its current funding, so a group of us in DAC decided to pool our giving to the program,” Lewin says. “One of the things I was pleased to see is that the lead gift that my wife and I contributed seemed to inspire others. It sometimes takes just a few people to step up and then others will come along.”
In addition to support from the school and university, the funding from DAC members will go toward improving and expanding the program, going from a total of 80 BOP students now to 135 over a period of four to five years.
“We also committed to funding and expanding the summer program, which is a great recruiting tool for getting underrepresented students to come to Purdue,” Lewin says. “It’s a perfect example of participation and cooperation and all the things you want from alumni to help drive a program and make it successful.”
