ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT
LIU Brooklyn Alum Gerald Yass Endows Scholarship for Accounting Majors For Gerald Yass (Brooklyn ’51, BS), the subway was his campus. “That was my study hall,” he said recently, recalling that he rode the train an hour from the Bronx to go to college where he got his degree in accountancy and went on to a very successful career.
GERALD YASS
Senior Executive & Advisor Susquehanna International Group
“If you give back, it implies that you’re taking. I never took; I earned. I always give from the heart.”
Now, with a gift of $1 million from the Susquehanna Foundation, a charity he set up with his son Jeffrey, he has established the Gerald Yass Endowed Scholarship to be awarded annually, based on merit and need, to two undergraduate students majoring in accounting on either the Post or Brooklyn campus. “My motivation is simple,” explained Yass, a certified public accountant. “I want two young kids to have the same break that I had.” His parents hardly spoke English, and neither his brother nor his sister ever went to college. “My father sat behind a sewing machine for 50 years in the garment district, and I knew I wasn’t going to do that,” he said. After he graduated, he worked for a year, earning $25 a week, doing bookkeeping. Then in 1951 he was drafted and served in the Army Finance Corps during the Korean War. In the meantime, he’d married his childhood sweetheart, Sybil, who was at his bar mitzvah. They went on to have a daughter, Carole, and Jeffrey, and five grandchildren. Following his military service, he worked at Eisner & Lubin, a mid-size accounting firm in Manhattan.
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LIU MAGAZINE | SPRING 2018
“I was fortunate enough to be assigned to different accounts in many different kinds of businesses, from coffee shops to steel mills,” he recalled from his home in Boca Raton, Florida, where he has lived since 2002. The career move he made in 1962 proved prophetic. “I went to work with a friend of mine at a company called Datatab,” Yass said. “We actually were the initiators of the computer services business. We were a rarity.” He stayed there for two decades, going from treasurer to chairman of the board. Then he started a company with just his son called Philadelphia Trading, which grew to become Susquehanna International Group, employing 2,000 people around the world. Rather than retire, Yass says he’s still employed as senior executive and advisor. For those considering accounting degrees, he recommends they take a course in creative writing and another one in public speaking. “Whatever career you have, you have to be able to communicate in writing and in talking,” Yass advised. “So, if you’re able to write and talk in front of groups, you’ve got it made.” Asked about the scholarship, he says he doesn’t regard it as “giving back.” “If you give back, it implies that you’re taking,” Yass said. “I never took; I earned. I always give from the heart.”