• Title: Chairman and CEO of the Noel Group
(Travel Guard International)
•
Age: 56
•
Hometown: Wausau, Wis.
•
Personal: Wife, Patty, and six children
y wife and I met at the age of
14 and married at 19. By the time we married, we knew the kind of
life we wanted to live. We continue to share values we embraced
when we were teenagers.
When we were 18, we visited my brother in Parsippany, N.J. On
the way back to Wisconsin, we spent a day in Chicago. We were
walking down Rush Street and came by St. Vincent's Orphanage.
Through the black metal bars, we could see all these little kids,
American kids of color with no mom or dad. We decided then that we
wanted two biological children and we wanted to adopt four others,
and that's what we did. Our children are now 34, 32, 31, 30, 29 and
28. They include two biracial children of African-American and
Caucasian parents, and two Amerasians from Inchon, South Korea.
We got married in our sophomore year at the University of
Wisconsin. We lived in a 10-foot-wide 1959 New Moon trailer with
aqua and white fins. We had a few dollars and a lot of love and
idealism that got us through tough times.
I worked at Sentry Insurance for 15 years. It was run like a
family by its chairman, John Joanis. When he left, the culture
changed, and I had to move on.
I was a spoiled 33-year-old who was used to traveling in
corporate jets, but I bought the name "Travel Guard" from Sentry
and moved the business into my basement.
We started all over again. We applied our values to the
business. We're proud that Working Woman magazine named us the No.
1 travel company for working mothers.
We've always had this mission to help disadvantaged kids. We
have 13 kids of color in a program called Compass Scholars. We pay
for their college education: room, board and tuition. They come to
our house and say, "Hey mom, hey dad, we're here."
They're disadvantaged kids from Milwaukee, three hours away. We
want to help the city. Businesses are fleeing. We want to create
jobs that will help us and help the kids.
I'm 56 years old. I don't know if I'll live to 57 or 76 or 86,
but I don't want to check out without doing something worthwhile.
-- Edited by Alan Fredericks
To contact Alan Fredericks, send e-mail to
[email protected]