Erik Olstein’s passion for Trinity-Pawling’s singular education is palpable through the phone lines of his company headquarters in Purchase, NY, where the 1986 alumnus and father of three—two sons are also graduates and the third is currently a sophomore—serves as President and Chief Operating Officer of the eponymously named Olstein Funds. That zeal, explains Olstein, is born of the values that were inculcated during his three years at T-P. “Then as now,” he says, “the school community instills that you have to advocate for yourself while also caring about your peers. You can’t be a man of character unless you are concerned with the welfare of those around you.”
Recently, Olstein put those values into action with a generous gift to his alma mater, creating the Joan and Elliot M. Olstein Endowment Fund to honor the parents who made possible his and brother Jon’s (Class of 1987) T-P educations AND to ensure that future generations of students will be as well served as his family has been. Income from the fund, which is unrestricted, eventually will be channeled to those projects and programs that T-P and its board of trustees deem most critical to the growth of the school and its faculty and students.
A trustee at T-P since 2006, Olstein, who participated in long-range planning for Trinity-Pawling in 2010 and more recently co-chaired the search committee for the new head of school, explains that, for him, giving to the endowment serves two crucial purposes: “One, it ensures the school’s financial future, because we don’t want to be in a situation where we are tuition-dependent. Two, in addition to the Annual Fund, it provides a vehicle for giving back yearly to the school for which my family and I have a lot of love; in other words, it’s a legacy.”