Robert G. Ripston Leadership Award
Robert G. Ripston was an executive at General Electric for 20 years before joining Ingersoll-Rand in 1973. Mr. Ripston also served as a director and former chairman of the Commerce and Industry Association of Northern New Jersey and vice president of the Bergen Council of the Boy Scouts of America. After retiring in 1994, he founded and served as president of the Leadership Center in Upper Saddle River, NJ. Mr. Ripston was an active member of the Ramapo community, serving as a governor on the Foundation Board and teaching as an adjunct professor in the School of Business. “Mr. Ripston believed that students too often left school without the necessary skills to achieve success in the working world and he took action to bring about change,” wrote The Star-Ledger at the time of his death. The Ripston Award recognizes business students with financial need and a “free market orientation.”