Join us in celebrating Gary Pan, Eta ’86 (Lehigh) as he receives the Distinguished Alumni Service Award. from Psi Upsilon. Over the last 20+ years, our brother Gary Pan has been one of the strongest supporters of Psi Upsilon and a steadfast member of the Foundation’s Scholarship Committee. In 2014, Gary joined the Foundation Board of Directors, all while continuing to engage with the undergraduate Eta Chapter and keeping the bonds between generations strong. His recent leadership of the Greek Alumni Council at Lehigh has formed to build a stronger ties with the university between alumni, undergraduates and university administrators.
Fittingly, Gary learned of the award at the Foundation’s scholarship awarding presentation, a surprise event with all the graduate and undergraduate recipients and select alumni who have made the program possible.
An excerpt from his keynote address at the presentation;
Today, I continue to try and make a difference as I mentioned, I am very involved with Psi U. Also at LeHigh as an alumni, I’m very involved with the Engineering college, with the chapter as well as the entire Greek community. I’m also, as [Executive Council President] Jeremy [Mckeon, Eta ’06] referenced, a Scout Master and have been for many, many years. I’m the incoming President of Rotary in my community and I started a number of youth programs and principally try and support the underserved youth community. I’ve very active in my professional board as well.
As I hope you all do, I continue to try and elevate my game and challenge myself to make a difference. I share my personal community service journey with you as I believe and that you also consider so in the future.
Thank you to you and Executive Council and the entire Fraternity, this is fantastic surprise and I am humbled. It’s an amazing distinction in that there are so many great people that have been recognized in the past, so thank you so much. Congratulations to all the award recipients, this is an incredible thing. You heard a little from Brother Dick (Richard A. Rasmussen, Upsilon ’72 [University of Rochester]) for all the hard work behind the scenes to recognize you guys and reading through these applications is a fantastic opportunity for us alumni to get back to the undergraduate setting and relive our experiences through you guys.
I wanted to share a little about myself and my personal Psi U journey. In high school, much like you guys and gals, I played sports, had tons of friends, studied hard, and got decent grades. One thing that was a little different was when I graduated from high school my friend’s parents would ask, “So Gary what are you going to do after high school?” I would say to them “I have a 10-year plan” and would lay it out to them and my friends would say “you’re such a jerk Gary…how could you do this to me”, because they were trying to figure out what they wanted to do. I was fortunate that I had a good solid 10-year plan for myself.
One area that I was struggling with though was that I was exceptionally shy. I couldn’t speak in public and certainly couldn’t talk to girls at that time. These were things I knew I had to overcome and I did eventually. A lot of that came through my experience as an undergrad. As with you, current undergrads academics was very important, but it wasn’t just about academics that I wanted to go to college, I actually wanted to do a lot more; I was hungry for more experiences. I wanted to develop my public speaking skills and well as my leadership skills.
So when I went to LeHigh, the Eta, I wasn’t planning on joining a fraternity. I saw that some of you had remarked about that situation in your essays. But when I met the brothers, I knew it was a home for me and some place I belonged. Overall, while I was I college, I was probably much like you, I was volunteering a lot: I was on the Student Senate, I was on the school paper, I was Judicial Chair for the IFC. I was Chapter Treasurer, Rush Chair, Vice president, Archon…I was actually fortunate enough to represent the Undergrads on the Undergraduarte Advisory Board. I was able to work with the International office members, staff and the Exec. Council and that was fantastic because I had the opportunity to attend the Convention and met some wonderful mentors along that way, it really helped me to understand that although we are autonomous and are we are different in a lot of ways, we all share a common bond and that is fantastic. It has actually strengthened me over the years as it relates to how strong those bonds can be whether through friendships, business or what not.
I’ve got to share one thing about my undergraduate experience that is a regret is that I did not apply for a Psi U scholarship, so I am really glad that all you guys took the energy to do that and I encourage you to inspire others to do likewise in the future. I was talking about Alumni that were really inspirational and motivating for me. Tom Fox’s predecessor, Henry B. Poor, Gamma ’39 ( H Delta/Lambda/Tau/Chi). Our offices were in Pennsylvania…he would come to our chapter often and it was an amazing experience to talk with him about moral leadership and the direction he was trying to inspire us young undergrads to go towards. He was a very, very big figure in my undergrad experience and beyond.
Let me tell you a little about after I graduated from LeHigh. I did study there and got my degree in Electrical Engineering and after I graduated wanted to continue with my 10-year plan was to start a small, IT information technology government contracting firm. Before that, I went to a small firm to all this great experience there. I’ve had my company, Pan Consulting, for 31 years and in 1999 we were recognized by Inc Magazine as the 74th fastest growing privately held firm. I also started another firm, Lucid Technology which was recognized by the same magazine as the 17th fastest company in 2009. I’ve got a lot of business experience which is fantastic. I went on to also to get my MBA and I also pursed my doctorate in Management as well.
All along the way, the post grad stuff I did part-time while I was raising my family and doing my business. It was a lot of energy but like many of you guys, you have a lot of energy and you want to apply it as efficiently and effectively as possible which is fantastic based upon your applications. One thing I learned from my undergraduate experience and my Psi U journey was about community engagement. Let me talk about the Scholarship Committee and how I came to be there. Henry B. Poor who I referenced earlier. He passed away in 2009 and was a big devotee of the Scholarship program…he was the biggest advocate for it. When he passed away, I was asked to take a position on the committee. Of course, I did it in his honor and over the years as Dick mentioned, we’ve seen tremendous applications and this year has been fantastic. One of the things that’s really awesome as an alum is, I get to go thought these applications, essays and see what it’s like to live on campus, to be part of the fraternity and to be an undergraduate. I’m not just talking about just my chapter, the Eta, but all the chapters that I have an opportunity to read up on. Things of note, I’m amazed by the Psi U Think You Can Dance philanthropy event at Pepperdine, I had not heard about so I as a result I took a look at Youtube’s on it. And the Out of Darkness walk at the Univ. of Mary Washington for suicide prevention that was inspirational. Our chapters and members do amazing things.
Given an opportunity from the Scholarship Committee to join, I ask you to consider jumping on board if you are given that chance and become a member. Let me talk about the Curtis J. Rettke, Eta ’84 (LeHigh) scholarship. Now, Kurt was 2 years older than me and he was working for a Paul Allen company up in PA. Paul Allen was the co-founder of Microsoft with Bill Gates and we were talking and I finally convinced him to come down to DC and work with me at my company to help start it up. What happened is we worked together for a dozen years and he was one of my first key employees. He eventually, after all those years, succumbed to leukemia and passed away. It was a very, very tough time for me to see a partner, friend, and brother with so much ambition and energy suffer and fall. As a member of the scholarship committee, I saw it was an opportunity to build out a scholarship in his name. We worked with the undergraduates of Eta and funded this scholarship and Brendan [Woodward, Zeta Zeta ‘22 ] , you are one of the recipients of it and congratulations from the Eta.
I wanted to share with you that it really does make it more personable, more special so while you are receiving name recognition and scholarships today, think back and maybe do a little research on who that person is, try and think about how you may have connectivity because that’s important.
Today, I continue to try and make a difference as I mentioned, I am very involved with Psi U. Also at LeHigh as an alumni, I’m very involved with the Engineering college, with the chapter as well as the entire Greek community. I’m also, as Jeremy referenced, a Scout Master and have been for many, many years. I’m the incoming President of Rotary in my community and I started a number of youth programs and principally try and support the underserved youth community. I’ve very active in my professional board as well.
As I hope you all do, I continue to try and elevate my game and challenge myself to make a difference. I share my personal community service journey with you as I believe and that you also consider so in the future.
As Jeremy referenced, I think it’s very important to make a difference not just in our families, not just in our own organizations but in our wider community. I am actually running for the Virginia House of Delegates because I want to bring common sense to government because it think there is a lot of craziness going on and we need some more people more business minded, not necessarily just politicians representing us.
Let me talk about that a little bit about this from a landscape perspective. We’re going through a very complex time, we are navigating challenging times here, culturally. We have specifically for our community a movement called Abolish Greek Life…you’ve probably heard of it. These are scary things; the power of social media, we have cancel culture, we have wokeness, and all sorts of other things out there. These are things that are going to be critical to what we believe is important.
We need to make sure that we live up to our fine reputation and live a life of distinction. It’s important for us to highlight our positives as Greek members, while social media and the press focus on negative and highlight them because it sells papers, we must make others aware of all the good things we do. We don’t always talk about them. We do tons of community service, we give back to the community, have fantastic academic standing and yet, we don’t talk about it. One thing I try and tell my scouts and my own boys and everyone around me that are youth is: if its true then it’s not bragging. We should actually get it out there and make sure people know what’s going on, especially when it’s positive.
At Psi U we have our values; lifelong leadership, moral leadership, intellectual engagement, responsible social conduct, service to society. Our scholarship recipients today exemplify these values. Through scholarships and mentoring, our generous alumni are investing in each of you.
In closing, I want to share some expectations and challenges. Encourage other members of your chapter to apply for Psi U scholarships down the road. Although it would mean having to review tons more (and Dick’s going to be mad at me probably). We love that opportunity and would like to see more chapters participate in the scholarship program.
I want to challenge you to use your skills to make a difference in your chapters, universities, the fraternity and beyond. These are your superpowers and if you just hold it to yourself, that’s one thing but if you can make a difference, wider and wider in your community that’s all the better. Be leaders and inspire others, you can be the multipler effect in regards today or all the good things we do. Remember where you come from and help others get to where you are today or will be in the future. Along your journey always remember to give back to those who made a difference in your lives.
Its been a fantastic afternoon here, congratulations again to all our awardees and thank you very much for your attendance today and the recognition from the Fraternity today as well.
