From BGSU OFFICE OF MARKETING & COMMUNICATIONS
Peggy Schmeltz of Bowling Green was inducted into the 2017 Hamilton Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership Hall of Fame during Entrepreneurship Week at Bowling Green State University.
Schmeltz, a 1950 and 1970 alumna, was one of three BGSU alumni inducted into the Hall of Fame this year. She is a longtime investment educator and independent investor. Her investment career started while she was still an undergraduate business student at BGSU; later, she turned a $75,000 inheritance into a portfolio worth more than 30 times that amount. Schmeltz went on to share her investment knowledge with many others, lecturing throughout the United States with her “learn to earn” strategies.
Alumni are invited back to campus each year to share their entrepreneurial journeys with students during the College of Business Administration’s celebration of entrepreneurship, dubbed E-Week. This year’s event featured alumnus Rick Kappel ’69, a 2015 Hall of Fame honoree, as the entrepreneur-in-residence. Kappel owned and served as president and CEO of ACS, Inc., a software company located in Dayton, Ohio, that specializes in the development and sale of software products for use by the commercial bank industry.
Maribeth S. Rahe, a 1970 alumna and honorary 2016 alumna, and David Stickler, a 1983 alumnus, were inducted alongside Schmeltz.
Rahe is president and CEO of Fort Washington Investment Advisors Inc. Under her leadership, the company has become one of Ohio’s largest investment advisers. Rahe is a past president and former board member of the United States Trust Co. of New York, and has served as vice chair of the board of The Harris Bank in Chicago, along with various positions at JPMorgan in London and New York.
Stickler is CEO of Big River Steel in Osceola, Ark. He has spent the past two decades building and operating some of the world’s most successful and profitable U.S. steel mills. Unlike traditional steel producers that use iron ore, coal and coke to produce steel in environmentally challenged facilities, Big River Steel produces new steel using recycled steel from old cars, appliances, buildings, ships and bridges.
“On behalf of all at BGSU, I offer sincere congratulations to our newest inductees into the Hamilton Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership Hall of Fame,” said BGSU President Mary Ellen Mazey. “They demonstrate the contributions our alumni are making throughout the world with their extraordinary accomplishments. BGSU is a better place because of them, and we are so very proud of them.”
