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W. Frank Fountain, WG’73
“I learned early in life that you should be
engaged and involved with the institutions
that are important to you, not to leave it
to chance or someone else,” says Frank
Fountain, a Wharton Overseer. “That's why
I’ve chosen to be engaged with Wharton.”
Wharton isn’t the only beneficiary of Fountain’s
time. In 2006 Crain’s Detroit named Frank Fountain the
region’s number-one “most connected” person — the local
leader who had forged the most connections through
civic and nonprofit board service. For Fountain, who is
DaimlerChrysler’s Group Senior Vice President of External
Affairs and Public Policy, being connected is part of his
job. But it’s also who he is.
Fountain was born in 1944 in Brewton, AL, as the oldest
of seven children in a struggling farm family. He learned
early the benefits of “working hard and working smart,”
attributes that helped him to earn a bachelor’s degree in
history and political science in 1966 from Virginia’s Hampton
University. From 1966 to 1968, he served in the Peace Corps
in West Bengal, India — a pivotal experience that he calls
“intense, challenging, sometimes painful, but always inspiring.”
His work there helped farmers produce a recordbreaking
rice harvest and introduced handicraft makers to
marketing.
By 1973, after returning to the U.S., Fountain earned
his Wharton MBA, and then landed a job at Chrysler as an
investment analyst. By 1995 he was appointed vice president
for government affairs, ascending to the position of
senior vice president after the 1998 merger of Daimler-Benz
and Chrysler Corp. As president of the DaimlerChrysler
Corporation Fund, Fountain oversees the distribution of
more than $20 million in grants annually, aimed at developing
a skilled workforce, ensuring community vitality, and
encouraging employee involvement.
Six years after graduation, Fountain first reconnected
with the School to help his company’s recruiting efforts.
Then in 1989, he became a leader in the Wharton African
American MBA Association’s effort to endow a professorship
in the name of Whitney M. Young. Since that success,
he became more deeply involved with the School, eventually
becoming a member of Wharton’s Board of Overseers.
And he is vocal about the need for such a commitment.
Fountain advises other alumni to engage with the School
in multiple ways — donating money, recruiting talent,
working with Wharton Alumni Clubs, and encouraging their
companies to become involved with the School’s research
centers and Executive Education.
He recalls that several years ago, DaimlerChrysler was
reconsidering the provider of its custom executive leadership
education.
“There was a list of six competing schools, and Wharton
wasn’t one of them,” Fountain says. He ensured that
Wharton had a chance to compete for the business, and
Wharton Executive Education ultimately won the contract on
its merits in an intense competition with another school.
In his private life, Fountain is busy on many boards, especially
those that support the Detroit community, including
Detroit Public Schools, and development and health
care in Africa, including the Corporate Council on Africa and
Africare, which address HIV-AIDS and other issues.
Among his many competing responsibilities, Wharton
ranks high on his priorities.
“Wharton is part of my heritage,” he says. “I think that
my original investment in Wharton has to be protected,
nurtured, and enhanced, because Wharton represents so
much of who I am and who I became professionally.”
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