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Montana
business elite: (left to right)
Dennis Washington, Liz Claiborne and Art
Ortenberg
UM honors top entrepreneurs
The founders
of an apparel empire and a homegrown business tycoon were honored
Oct. 6 by UM.
Liz Claiborne and Art Ortenberg, founders of Liz Claiborne Inc., and
Dennis Washington, founder of Washington Companies, were presented
with the first-ever Lewis & Clark Pioneer in Industry Awards during
a formal awards banquet.
These new awards will be given annually to world-class entrepreneurs
who started with modest resources and won national and international
recognition as leaders in their industry.
Offered by UM, the UM School of Business Administration and the Montana
Academy of Distinguished Entrepreneurs, the awards honor extraordinary
individuals whose professional achievements represent revolutionary,
pioneering impacts in their fields of endeavor. Recipients also demonstrate
a sense of social responsibility by contributing to their communities,
serving as exemplary role models for students and the general public.
Claiborne, Ortenberg and Washington were selected from a pool of 30
worthy candidates chosen by the MADE organization. MADE was created
in 2002 to provide networking opportunities for Montana entrepreneurs,
to involve businesspeople in UM’s business school and to create
the critical mass necessary to promote entrepreneurship in the state.
In 1976, Claiborne and Ortenberg founded Liz Claiborne Inc., which
designs and markets a wide range of women’s and men’s
apparel and accessories. The company generated more than $4.2 billion
in sales in 2003 and reported an annual net income of $279.9 million.
The couple also founded the Liz Claiborne Art Ortenberg Foundation,
which funds projects around the world to combat species extinction,
habitat destruction and fragmentation, and resource depletion.
Washington is founder of Washington Group International, an organization
with global operations in defense, energy, the environment, industrial
processes, infrastructure and mining. The company reported annual
sales of $2.5 billion in 2003 and a net income of $42.1 million.
Washington is known for his generosity to educational institutions,
and the UM football stadium bears his name. The Dennis and Phyllis
Washington Foundation also has more than $12 million in assets and
donates to a range of education, youth, senior citizen and human services
groups.
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