2019 Honorees

2019 Gold & White Honors Gala

For roughly 133 years, Georgia Tech has educated, fostered and empowered some of the most influential people in the United States and the world at large. Not only are they engineers and designers, but they are also pioneers in business and technology, and leaders in government and education.

The Alumni Association has been proud to formally recognize the many Yellow Jackets who have distinguished themselves through outstanding achievements in their fields and generous contributions to society since 1934. That year, L.W. “Chip” Robert Jr., CE 1908—for whom the Alumni House is named—was bestowed the very first alumni award for his success in industry and public service, which included helping to run U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration (WPA) from 1933 to 1936.

Now officially called the Gold & White Honors, these awards recognize career accomplishments, service to society, dedication to their communities and generosity to Tech. Let’s introduce you to the next seven Yellow Jackets who the Alumni Association has singled out for their successes with its top awards. Their achievements will be celebrated in Atlanta this coming February at the 2019 Gold & White Honors Gala.

TYLER TOWNSEND, IE 98

MANAGING PARTNER, TOWNSEND WEALTH MANAGEMENT

Dean Griffin Community Service Award: Recognizes alumni who have performed exemplary community service in the following ways: service in a long-term volunteer capacity, impact on the quality of life of others, leadership and creativity in dealing with societal problems, and ability to serve as a source of inspiration for others.

Growing up in a Ramblin’ Wreck household and as a huge Yellow Jackets sports fan, Tyler Townsend never considered going to college anywhere else but Georgia Tech. After “getting out” with an engineering degree, he worked in Atlanta for a software development company.

But eventually the lure of joining the family business—Townsend Wealth Management, founded by his father, Ken Townsend, ME 64, in Columbus, Ga.—was impossible to ignore. He started on the ground floor and moved his way up to managing partner for the small firm, where he oversees daily operations.

As much of a pivotal role as he has played in helping people plan for their retirements, Townsend has made an even bigger impact in serving his community. He’s president-elect of the Rotary Club of Columbus, and serves on the boards for the Community Foundation of the Chattahoochee Valley and the Columbus Museum. He co-chaired a commission to make recommendations for the city’s revenue structure to be fair and sustainable while promoting economic growth. “Columbus is a very generous place,” he says. “It grew up as a mill town but has evolved into a major force in the financial services community. I’ve been fortunate to be part of its success.” Townsend still frequently makes the trek up I-85 to attend Yellow Jackets games with his wife, Eleanor, and their two sons, as well as to participate in Alumni Association events. He’s an at-large board member of the Association and no stranger to being recognized for his contributions to Tech, having won the Association’s Outstanding Young Alumnus award in 2012.

LIZZIE DONNELLY, IE 08

STUDENT AMBASSADOR, GEORGIA TECH

Outstanding Young Alumni Award: The award is given to young Georgia Tech alumni—those who have not reached their 40th birthday by the date of the awards gala—who have demonstrated outstanding leadership and service to Tech, the Alumni Association, the community and their profession.

If you’ve ever met one of the Student Ambassadors at Georgia Tech, you quickly realize just how far the Institute’s best and brightest will go. For Lizzie Donnelly, that’s meant geographically far—specifically, all the way to London, where she’s currently on leave taking care of her toddler son after serving as development manager of The London School of Economics and Political Science. The job was the perfect marriage of her undergraduate studies in international affairs and her discovered love for higher education administration. “I truly loved being an Ambassador and working as a student assistant for the Alumni Association during my time at Tech,” she says. “It opened me up to a very different field, and I knew that’s where I wanted to build my career.”

Soon after “getting out,” she embarked to Clemson to earn her master’s degree in higher education, and then she landed at Georgetown University, where she served as an assistant director, first for alumni class programs and reunion campaigns, and then major gifts and fundraising. While working in Washington, D.C., she became very involved in the Georgia Tech DC Alumni Network, where she served as Roll Call chair from 2012-13 and president from 2013-15. She also is a past president of Tech’s Young Alumni Council, and helped launch the GT GOLD newsletter. When her husband, Alex Donnelly, Mgt 08, took a job in London, she quickly landed at the London School of Economics, where she worked to develop relationships and lead fundraising efforts with alumni, parents and friends across the globe—a perfect blend of her passions for international travel and higher ed.

JERRY MCTIER

FORMER GEORGIA TECH DIRECTOR OF FINANCIAL AID

The Honorary Alumni Award: This award bestows a long-due honorary degree to those who didn’t earn a degree at Georgia Tech but have devoted themselves to the greater good of the Institute.

It’s fitting that Jerry McTier spent the bulk of his career in higher education helping families afford to send their kids off to universities like Georgia Tech. He grew up in Savannah a huge Yellow Jackets fan—“mainly because everybody else rooted for Georgia”—and wanted to attend the Institute. However, at the time, coming from a family of modest means meant a Tech education was not in the cards. McTier instead earned a bachelor’s in psychology and political science from the University of North Georgia and a master’s in education from West Georgia University, then embarked upon a long career working in higher ed.

After successful stints at Oglethorpe and Georgia State, McTier was hired by the Institute in 1994 to help fix its “chaotic” financial aid department. And like a true “helluva engineer,” he arrived with a problem-solving mindset. “Most every problem in business is a communication problem,” he says. “The first thing I did in taking over the office was to improve how we spoke to each other, and then how we communicated to students and families.” A deep commitment to customer service always drove McTier, and by convincing his staff that it should always be job No. 1, he turned things around quickly at Tech. In total, he estimates he helped more than 90,000 students find nearly $3.2 billion in tuition assistance during his 20-plus-year career at the Institute. He was also “the man behind the curtain” in getting President Emeritus G. Wayne Clough’s Promise Scholarship Program up and running, filling a key gap in the Institute’s support system for low-income families. For all his work, in 2002 he received a lifetime achievement award from the Georgia Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators.

But the biggest reward of his tenure at Tech, he says, has been seeing the kids he helped get into the Institute finally “get out” and succeed.

JACK J. FAUSSEMAGNE, IM 65

RETIRED FOUNDING PARTNER OF THE RITZ-CARLTON HOTEL CO.

Faussemagne is also an emeritus member of the Georgia Tech Foundation Board and has served on the boards of the Alumni Association, Alexander-Tharpe Fund and the SigEp National Housing Corporation. When he came to Tech from Texas without knowing a soul, he thought he was destined to become an engineer. However, Faussemagne quickly (and astutely) found out his talents were suited for business (blame organic chemistry). After getting his bachelor’s degree in industrial management, he briefly worked for Lockheed-Martin before earning an MBA at the University of Pennsylvania, and then moved through a number of job experiences. “I had a professor who said you’re always worth more to your next employer than you are to your current one,” Faussemagne says. “So early on I tried not to stay longer than 2 years with any single company so I could keep climbing upward while constantly learning new things.” His career mentor, the late William B. “Bill” Suhonen, Cls 59, hired him to help operate some White House and holiday inn franchises. “Bill wanted someone with experience in commercial development, hotels, accounting and construction—and I was the rare person who had done it all,” he says. “The rest is history.”

RONALD L. "RON" JOHNSON, MS OR 85

PROFESSOR OF THE PRACTICE, INDUSTRIAL & SYSTEMS ENGINEERING

Joseph Mayo Pettit Distinguished Service Award: The highest award conferred by the Alumni Association, honoring alumni who have provided outstanding support for the Institute and Alumni Association throughout a lifetime and who have provided leadership in their chosen professions and local communities.

Though he retired in 2008 from the U.S. Army as a major (two-star) general after 32 years of service to his country, Ron Johnson wasn’t nearly done building his already impressive career. The former deputy commanding officer of the Army Corps of Engineers—who at one time supervised 70,000 engineer soldiers—caught the interest of David Stern, former commissioner of the National Basketball Association. Stern wanted Johnson to use his leadership and analytical skills to head up a newly created position and overhaul the league’s refereeing operations, which had been plagued by scandals. As a senior vice president of the NBA, Johnson put in place a more regimented system of training and accountability, and vastly improved public trust in basketball officiating. Still not done seeking new adventures, Johnson returned to the place that gave him his first serve as managing director of the Tennenbaum Institute of Enterprise Transformation and then became a Professor of the Practice in industrial and systems engineering.

As you might expect, Johnson has been as effective at Tech as he was at his previous posts. He recently was named educator of the year at the college level by the Black Engineer of the Year Awards—not only for his ability to connect with students at Tech, but also for tutoring young men and women nationwide to improve their test scores so they can get into U.S. military service academies. Johnson is a former trustee for both the Georgia Tech Foundation and Alumni Association, and served on the Georgia Tech Advisory Board. He has two endowed scholarships in his name at Tech (and another at West Point, too). Beyond the Institute, he has served on the boards of Leave a Veteran Behind and Goodwill Industries, and was recently selected as a national trustee for the Boys and Girls Club of America. His awards are plentiful. His military honors include the Distinguished Service Medal, the Bronze Star and the Legion of Merit. He was inducted into Tech’s Academy of Distinguished Engineering Alumni in 2005, and won the Black Engineer Lifetime Achievement Award in 2008. He lives in Atlanta and is the proud father of 29-year-old son, Ian, a combat engineer and paratrooper with the Army’s 82nd Airborne.

ROGER KRONE, AE 78

CHAIRMAN AND CEO, LEIDOS INC.

Joseph Mayo Pettit Distinguished Service Award: The highest award conferred by the Alumni Association, honoring alumni who have provided outstanding support for the Institute and Alumni Association throughout a lifetime and who have provided leadership in their chosen professions and local communities.

Roger Krone always knew he wanted to be an engineer, though his mother thought that meant he wanted to work with trains. His father—a World War II bombardier—is the one who sparked his interest in completely different modes of transportation. “We’d often go to a local playground near the airport and watch the planes take off and land,” Krone says. “It was the 1960s, and the aviation and aerospace industries were the exciting, high-tech fields everyone wanted to get into. Everyone wanted to be a pilot or astronaut or engineer.” He came to Tech because it had a flying club and a well-regarded aerospace engineering program, but also Krone was eager to move away from Ohio for an adventure. Tech’s tough culture of academic rigor helped him excel. “It turned me from an average student to a regular on the Dean’s List,” he says.

After “getting out,” Krone embarked upon a stellar 30-plus years in the aerospace industry, working his way up through positions in engineering, finance and program management for the likes of McDonnell Douglas, General Dynamics and Boeing, until becoming Boeing’s president of network and space systems. In 2014, he was named CEO of Leidos Inc., a leading defense, aviation, information technology and biomedical research company. Though he’s based in Virginia, Krone has done a great deal in recent years to support his undergraduate alma mater. He first got involved with the Georgia Tech Advisory Board in 2007, including a one-year term as chair, and has been a member of the Georgia Tech Foundation Board since 2014. “I enjoyed getting to know how these groups worked and how much of an impact they can have on supporting students and research,” Krone says. He also helps run the Krone Foundation with his wife, Helen, and their three grown children. In 2017, the Krones gave the lead gift for Tech’s cutting-edge Engineered Biosystems Building, which is named in their honor. Somehow he still manages to find time to fly his plane (he’s a commercially licensed pilot), run in half marathons and cheer on the Yellow Jackets.

J. PAUL RAINES, IM 85

FORMER CEO OF GAMESTOP

After graduating from Tech with a degree in industrial engineering, his career included leadership at a number of top companies, including Kurt Salmon Associates, L.L. Bean, Home Depot and GameStop. He oversaw more than 2,000 stores and $70 billion in sales revenues as a top executive for Home Depot. Later as CEO of GameStop—the world’s largest video game retailer—he led acquisitions of AT&T and Cricket stores, as well as online collectibles retailer ThinkGeek and Simply Mac, an authorized Apple reseller. He was a proud Yellow Jacket, and urged his daughter, Victoria, BA 16, and son, Julian, a third-year business major, to follow in his academic footsteps.

He also gave generously to Tech, serving on the Georgia Tech Foundation Board from July 2013 until his death, as well as on the School of Industrial and Systems Engineering and College of Engineering advisory boards. Paul and Claudia also supported two scholarships for American students with Hispanic backgrounds—one need-based for tuition and the other geared for studying abroad. “We also supported other education-based causes in the U.S. and Costa Rica,” Claudia says. “Our parents didn’t have a lot of money, but they sacrificed to make sure we were well-educated. It’s been important to us to try to help those in similar situations.” Above all things, she says, Paul was deeply committed to his family. “He always did everything he could to spend as much time as possible with the kids and me,” she says. “He worked hard to make sure we had a good and secure life.”