Transforming Lives
Gerald Lyles (MSIA ’71) is no stranger to giving to Purdue. His family includes numerous Boilermaker alumni, and in 2014 the Lyles Foundation’s $15 million gift renamed the University’s School of Civil Engineering.
More recently, the Purdue University Board of Trustees recognized Gerald and his wife, Nanette Lyles, for giving a total of $4.5 million to the Krannert School of Management to support the ongoing renovation of Rawls Hall, Rising Star professorships for early- to mid-career faculty and graduate fellows.
Lyles is president of Lyles United LLC and senior vice president of Lyles Diversified Inc., his family’s companies. He has led the pipeline, utility and concrete and mechanical construction firm that his parents started in 1945 to become the second-largest environmental contractor in California and a top 50 environmental firm in the nation.
Lyles says his transformational gifts reflect his transformative experience in Krannert’s master’s program in industrial administration.
“I came to the program with a civil engineering degree that I had used in the Navy Civil Engineering Corps and then in construction management,” he says. “After six years in those arenas, I could see I did not have the passion to be successful in construction management and needed to take my foundation education, add something else to it, and then re-enter the employment market.
“I wasn’t sure of what that would be, although I felt the addition would likely come in the financial arena with accounting and investment analysis. After looking at various programs available to me, Krannert was the perfect answer.
“The program provided a diverse background of studies in marketing, finance, accounting, personnel management, and production primarily oriented toward a production environment. This preparation launched me into a new life of diversified work and a career I thoroughly enjoyed.”
He hopes their gifts to the school will help provide the same life-changing education for others.
“A duplication of the type of Krannert education I received requires an outstanding faculty and quality facilities requiring maintenance and upkeep — and that students have the means for paying for their education,” Lyles says. “Our gift is designed to support these three legs of a Krannert education.”
In addition to helping provide the means for young people with technical degrees achieve a well-rounded management education, Lyles says he is proud to help the Krannert School maintain its status as one of the nation’s and world’s preeminent business schools for graduate education.
“It is my hope that the gifts will serve as an example to others that a donation of one’s financial resources to help sustain such a program is a very small payback for the blessings it brought to me in this lifetime,” he says.
