Kent State College of Business Administration Alumni Featured in Kent State Magazine

KENT, Ohio - July 21, 2016 - PRLog -- When M.R. Rangaswami, M.B.A. '78—the youngest in a family of seven children who grew up in Madras (now known as Chennai), India—first came to Kent State in 1976, he had $8 in his pocket, all the Indian government allowed for those leaving the country, plus a $100 bill his brother had slipped him.

His sister-in-law had given him pots‚ pans and spices he needed for cooking vegetarian meals, but the Greyhound bus he took from New York to Kent lost them. When he met his host family and told them what happened, they went to Kmart and bought him more pots‚ pans and any spices they could find. "The warmth of Kent State stood out from day one," Rangaswami recalls.

Forty years later, after making a fortune investing in tech start-ups, he returned to Kent State from his home in San Francisco to be this year's speaker at the Michael D. Solomon Entrepreneurship Speaker Series in March, hosted by the College of Business Administration.

Cofounder and CEO of Sand Hill Group, a software consulting and investment firm, Rangaswami recently was named one of 100 leading influential business leaders by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, an international accrediting agency. He also has been profiled on the front page of The Wall Street Journal and has twice earned a spot on the Forbes Midas List of the world's smartest tech investors.

We adapted his speech, "The Nexus of Entrepreneurship, Mentorship & Philanthropy," to highlight some of his most memorable lessons from different phases of life.


Read the full article here: https://www.kent.edu/magazine/news/lessons-learned.