Former Foundation Chair Named Trustee
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Peter Drotch |
Gov. M. Jodi Rell has appointed Peter S. Drotch, former head of PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Investment Management Services Group, to UConn’s Board of Trustees. His appointment took effect in November.
Drotch, who lives in Framingham, Mass., earned a bachelor’s degree in accounting from UConn’s School of Business in 1964. He joined Price Waterhouse in Hartford, transferred to Boston in 1965, and became a partner in 1975. He played a significant role in the development of the firm’s investment management practice, working personally with most of the major investment management companies in the nation.
Drotch retired from PricewaterhouseCoopers in 2000. He was a member of the firm’s global investment management leadership team and the financial services industry leadership team for the Americas.
He has a longstanding relationship with the University. In 1986, he was elected to the Foundation’s Board of Directors, serving two terms as chair from 1990 to 1994. In 1996, he was honored for his work as chair with the creation and naming of a Nutmeg Scholarship in his honor. A member of the School of Business Board of Advisors, he was inducted into the School’s Hall of Fame in 1995, and received the Outstanding Accountant Award from the accounting department in 2001.
Drotch says his connection to the University is an emotional one. His brother Paul, who was six years his senior, preceded him at UConn. After Paul graduated with a degree in microbiology in 1957, he trained as a fighter pilot in the Marine Corps. When Drotch was a freshman, he received some devastating news: his brother had been killed on a training mission in Cuba.
“That defined my life in many respects,” he says. “Up until that point, academics weren’t high on my list of interests. My brother’s death really matured me.”
Drotch was in the middle of finals when he learned of his brother’s death. The University let him take the exams the following term, which, he says, “was helpful and allowed me to deal with the situation.”
He left Storrs and attended the Stamford branch for a year as a part-time student, and attended the University of Bridgeport for a year. He then returned to UConn as a “mature student” dedicated to his education.
The Lt. Paul Drotch Memorial Scholarship fund was established to honor his brother. Each year since 1960, students from life sciences and accounting have received awards from the scholarship fund.
Drotch says that being a UConn trustee is an “easy transition” for him. “I’m familiar with the University and hope to continue to support it in many different ways.”
Drotch is also on the board of trustees of State Street Research Funds, which consists of 19 mutual funds that are distributed by State Street Research & Management Co. in Boston. And he is a member of the board of directors and chairs the audit committee of First Marblehead Corp., a company that processes student loans and packages them for institutional investment.
Drotch is a past board member of the Massachusetts Society of Certified Public Accountants; a past president of the National Investment Companies Services Association; and a past trustee at Hebrew College in Newton, Mass. He is a current trustee of the New England College of Finance and the Huntington Theatre, both in Boston.
He and his wife Hinda, whom he met at UConn, have three children and four grandchildren.
Drotch will serve on UConn’s board until 2007. He replaces Michael H. Cicchetti, who resigned in November.
