Pulichino Wants to Help Students
Lowell Sun
05/11/2012
By
Evan Lips
LOWELL — He’s called Florida his home for the last 16 years, but John Pulichino never forgot about Lowell.
Pulichino, who graduated from Lowell Technological Institute (now UMass Lowell) in 1967 with a bachelor’s degree in industrial management, is teaming up with his wife, Joy Tong, to give students at his alma mater a $4 million boost.
The university’s new business-school facility will be named in Pulichino and his wife’s honor, but the alumnus said Thursday it was “never about putting a name on a building.”
Pulichino, reached by phone from his Boca Raton, Fla., home, said the “real objective was to help kids in need of financial aid.”
To give back to his alma mater amid their highly successful business careers, Pulichino and Tong recently created the Pulichino/Tong Family Foundation scholarship fund for students in UMass Lowell’s Manning School of Business, which will be housed in the new building.
This is the 12th donation of more than $1 million to UMass Lowell since 2007. Annual fundraising is up 84 percent to $15.2 million, with $62 million in gifts and pledges raised in the last five years.
Chancellor Marty Meehan expressed his gratitude in Thursday’s press release while Pulichino said he’s grateful his alma mater has Meehan steering the ship.
“He’s one of the reasons I was drawn back in,” Pulichino said. “Years ago he asked me to serve on an advisory board and after that I got even more engaged.”
Pulichino is the chief executive officer of Group III International Ltd., a global company founded in 1984 by Tong, an industrial designer who is the company’s creative director.