Traveling more than 2 million miles around the world and spending 5,000 nights in hotels, Alvin Rohrs, president and CEO of Students in Free Enterprise, is living proof that the Springfield SIFE complex is a world headquarters.
Looking at the numbers - programs in more than 1,400 universities in 44 countries involving more than 38,000 students - it's obvious the entrepreneurial student program is making a difference. SIFE's goal is to leverage the power of business into socially responsible initiatives and communities.
Rohrs jumped on SIFE's bandwagon 26 years ago. "My first job was to raise $30,000," he recalls. Now, the organization has an operating budget of $19 million.
That, he says, is his ongoing challenge.
Rohrs spends about 80 percent of his time fundraising, with the rest divided between strategic planning and administrative leadership duties. Rohrs typically spends only two days a week in the office, and then he's off to such cities as Chicago or New York, meeting with key executives of such companies as Campbell's, Aflac, Microsoft, HSBC, Unilever, PepsiCo and USA Today.
The travel can be rigorous, but Rohrs says there are perks: A fews days after the 2008 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, the department store's CEO hosted a fundraiser for Rohrs and SIFE at the retailer's 34th Street headquarters in New York City.
What keeps him going is his passion and belief in the positive impact SIFE has on students, businesses and communities.
"What we do and what we mobilize our students to do is really making a positive impact in communities across the U.S. and around the world," Rohrs says, "It's helping people help themselves live a more sustainable life, financially, personally, and in lots of cases now, environmentally."
Throughout his SIFE tenure, Rohrs identifies a few defining moments.
In the early 1980s, Wal-Mart Stores Vice Chairman Jack Shewmaker agreed to be chairman of SIFE's board and allowed the fledgling organization to use his name and credibility. Shewmaker later threw his support into SIFE becoming an international organization in 2000.
For Rohrs personally, meningitis in 1990 and a flight from New York City to Springfield when he wasn't sure if he'd ever see his family again caused some serious life analysis. "That was a turning point in my life," he says. "That's where it really hit me that I cannot do this on my own, and I have to build an organization and not just do a good job."[[In-content Ad]]
