Thanks to increased philanthropic donations, the CSUDH Alumni Association awarded a record 16 students with scholarships for the 2021-22 school year, providing them with funds to help continue their education. This marks the most Alumni Scholarships that have ever been awarded in a single year.

The recipients include seven graduate and nine undergraduate students—all carefully chosen for the scholarships, which are given annually to students with strong academic records and service to the university and their communities.

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Doug Le Bon didn’t start his successful career in high finance in some luxurious Wall Street office—he started his rise with a series of day jobs that helped him afford to attend CSUDH at night. But even as he drove a soft drink delivery truck around the South Bay, he knew that education was the key to unlocking a better future.

Le Bon earned a pair of business degrees at CSUDH: a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration (1976) and an MBA (1979). Now, he’s giving back to the university, with the goal of helping others make the same leap into success.

Le Bon is the co-founder and senior managing director of Pathway Capital Management, one of the world’s most successful private market investment firms, managing over $85 billion in assets. Now, he has also made the largest gift to CSUDH by a living alum—giving the university $500,000 for scholarships, and another $200,000 for technology in the new Innovation & Instruction building.

As a long-time financial expert, Le Bon is keenly aware of the problems many students have paying for college today. “I think it can be really difficult now for young people to go to college,” says Le Bon. “It’s not only the actual cost of college, but students have to put food on their tables. My motivation was to try to make it easier for people to get their degrees and not leave college with so much debt.”

“That’s a really difficult thing now for students to do,” Le Bon adds. “Especially if you’re studying liberal arts, or studying to be a teacher or social worker. A businessperson or lawyer can expect to make money and pay off their debt, but for students in other disciplines it can be problematic.”

In fact, Le Bon believes that his success can be partially attributed to graduating from CSUDH without a lot of debt. “One of the real advantages of going to Dominguez Hills was that it was affordable. I didn’t owe anybody when I graduated. It afforded me the ability to take a job that I wanted, instead of the best-paying job,” he recalls.

Le Bon worked at a variety of jobs while attending CSUDH (including the aforementioned soft drink delivery gig), and went to classes at night. “For me, life was getting off of work, hustling to school, going to the library, and getting ready for my classes. Then when school ended, I went home. I was a pretty typical commuter student.”

After attaining his MBA from CSUDH, Le Bon got his first finance job at an investment firm then called Houlihan Lokey Howard & Zukin. After a few years as an analyst, Le Bon says, “I was able to see how attractive private markets were, in terms of places to invest and make money. I wanted to make that work for more people, and to do it for pension funds and pensioners.”

He took a job at investment firm Wilshire Associates, where he started and grew a practice helping pension funds invest in private markets. During the 1980s, this was a fairly new practice in the industry, and Le Bon helped pioneer its use. By the end of the decade, Le Bon had become a partner at the firm, but he “still had the bug to run my own shop,” as he says.

He left the company and, with a few partners, founded a new firm called Pathway Capital Management in 1991. They moved to their current Orange County offices during the 1990s, and now employ almost 200 employees spread across four offices. Such success has enabled Le Bon to focus some of his energy on giving back—which resulted in his generous recent donations.

As a graduate of the business school, Le Bon was eager to help equip the new Innovation & Instruction building, which now houses the College of Business Administration and Public Policy (CBAPP). His largess enabled the university to purchase several Bloomberg Terminals, software systems that enable users to monitor and analyze financial market data.

“Access to education is the hallmark of CSUDH,” says Rama Malladi, associate professor of finance. “Bloomberg Terminals provide access to rich, real-time financial data to our CBAPP students, connecting them to a network of 325,000 of the world’s most influential decision makers.”

In addition, CBAPP students will get access to Bloomberg Market Concepts, a self-paced e-learning course that provides an interactive introduction to financial markets. CSUDH students who pass the course will receive a free certification.
“Technology is key, and access to technology is key,” says Le Bon. “If students are going to go into money management or anything like that, they are going to have to be facile and adept at using technology like Bloomberg Terminals in order to keep up.”

“I would really like it if more Dominguez Hills business students ended up in asset management, because there are just not enough young people from diverse or underserved communities in the discipline. If having these terminals in place helps spur interest and gives those students a background that makes them more attractive to employers, that would be great.”

As part of Le Bon’s donation, $500,000 will establish the Le Bon Family Scholarship at CSUDH. The gift will provide funding for the Presidential Scholars Program, the new Pay It Forward initiative, and the CSUDH general scholarship fund.

“Sometimes, the passions of our alums remain more latent than visible, but once revealed, they point a way to a brighter future. Mr. Le Bon’s extraordinary generosity represents everything that’s special about our Toro Nation,” said CSUDH President Thomas A. Parham. “His contributions will make a huge impact on the lives of scores of CSUDH students and faculty going forward. When our successful alumni extend a helping hand to those coming after them, it both establishes a legacy to build on, and illustrates exactly what we mean by ‘Go Far Together.’ We are all more than grateful for and appreciative of Mr. Le Bon’s stunning philanthropic support.”

As for current and future Toros, Le Bon offers this advice: “Come out of Dominguez Hills with the attitude that it’s taught you how to learn and how to adjust. The business that I started in private equity wasn’t even taught in business school when I went to CSUDH.

“The biggest thing is you never stop learning. Nurture the ability to continue learning and adjust to the marketplace and the environment, so that you’re not the tail being wagged by the dog. That’s the best way to foresee and react positively to changes in the economic and business environment.”

Le Bon thinks that the current generation of students will be well-placed for such changes in the future, due to the disruptions they’ve all had to endure during the COVID-19 pandemic. “The COVID generation has been through a lot,” he says. “This generation of college graduates have proven themselves to be really resilient, and they should be proud and pleased with everything they’ve been able to accomplish during this time.”

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CSUDH received a total of $8.3 million in philanthropic gifts and pledges during the 2020-2021 fiscal year. The record-breaking amount continues the upward trend of CSUDH giving, almost doubling the total of $4.5 million raised in 2019-2020.

Vice President of University Advancement Scott Barrett shared his excitement for the success of the university’s fundraising efforts. “We set a very aspirational goal for the university, and we were very fortunate to meet that goal,” he said. “It’s clear that our campus is doing inspiring work, and our donors are answering the call to support the needs and opportunities across our campus.”

One important effort involved the Toro Fund, the university’s unrestricted annual fund. Due to urgent pandemic-driven needs among the CSUDH student population, money from the Toro Fund was used to support emergency and basic student needs. When asked to support this effort, the response from Toro alumni was impressive: the university received 937 gifts totaling $132,469.

The donations were used to provide more than 1,400 students with meals, fresh produce, and pandemic preparedness kits. In addition, the funds provided shelter for 31 students facing housing insecurity and allowed more than 200 students the opportunity to participate in wellness events.

While the university received federal assistance under the CARES Act to distribute to students, Toro international and undocumented students were not eligible for aid through the COVID-19 relief program. Toro donors stepped up in a big way again, providing $141,000 in direct financial support for these students.

“When CARES funding came through, it helped support our documented, domestic students, but left out all of our international and undocumented students,” says Barrett. “The fact that we had the money in the Toro Fund to be able to support those students was critically important.”

Among the most noteworthy alumni donors is Doug Le Bon, co-founder and senior managing director of Pathway Capital Management LLC in Irvine, Calif. Le Bon, who attained both his bachelor’s degree in business administration (1976) and MBA (1979) from CSUDH, contributed a remarkable $500,000 for student scholarships and an additional $200,000 for technology in the new Innovation & Instruction building – in total, the largest donation to the university by a living alum in CSUDH history.

Long-time Toro supporter Maureen McCarthey, an alumna who earned her MA in special education from CSUDH in 1996, contributed $70,000 to the Maureen P. McCarthey Foundation Scholarship, which she originally established in 2001. Her contributions have increased over the years, and this is now one of the university’s premier scholarship endowments.

The CSUDH Philanthropic Foundation has set a multi-year goal to secure $10 million in scholarships and student success support by June 2026. They are well on their way to attaining that goal: in the first year of their initiative alone, more than $5 million was committed to these student needs.

“I think this is the beginning of an upward trajectory,” Barrett added. “We expect that philanthropic investment will continue to grow on a sustainable basis over the next few years. When we look at the nature and the history of CSUDH, our alumni, and the support we receive from the wider community, in terms of friends and corporate and foundation gifts, I think we can be very confident that’s where we’re headed.”

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Snap Inc., developer of Snapchat, announced a $5 million gift to CSUDH for the creation and endowment of a new institute focused on addressing equity gaps in computing education. The gift comprises the largest single donation ever given to the CSUDH campus.

Housed in the CSUDH College of Education, the new institute will serve as a leader in computing education research, teacher preparation, and curriculum development centered around equity and access, particularly for students with special needs and for bilingual, multilingual, and dual language learners. Additionally, through strong partnerships with Los Angeles area school districts, the institute will work to make high-quality computer science education an integral part of the experience of all K-12 students.

“The legacy that Snap Inc. is helping to build will positively impact the South Bay and California as a whole, and reverberate through generations of computer science teachers and learners,” CSUDH President Thomas A. Parham said. “Integrating computer science education into the curriculum of K-12 schools in underserved communities is an important step in closing the digital divide that leaves many would-be scholars on the outside looking in.

“With Snap Inc.’s help, CSUDH will smash that digital divide and create technology-savvy, academically engaged leaders throughout Southern California.”

Snap Inc.’s gift was made in conjunction with the launch of the Action to Catalyze Tech Report, created by the Catalyze Tech coalition. One of the report’s key recommendations is to transform future pathways into tech for underrepresented talent, and to solve the acute lack of computer science teachers by funding endowed centers of excellence for computer science teaching in colleges.

“We’re so excited to begin the work. We’re going to incorporate computer science knowledge and theories into course material, working with teachers in Los Angeles Unified School District, Inglewood, Lynwood, and other local districts to support them as they learn to integrate computer science into their everyday teaching,” said Jessica Pandya, dean of the College of Education. “We are also going to start a variety of activities for school-aged students, from coding nights to coding summer camps, with an explicit focus on issues of access and equity.”

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