January 11, 2005 -- Boston businessman Daniel M.Meyers is very clear about one thing: he is not an educator. But inspired by respect for the profession, a longtime friendship with Dean David Breneman, and the work underway at Curry, he has given the school $22 million–its largest gift ever and the second largest gift to an American school of education.

“The story is not about me; it’s about what’s happening at Curry,”Meyers said.

“If a group of Curry faculty and students was discussing how best to teach children
to read and I was in the room, they’d send me out to get bagels.”

Despite his self-deprecating manner,Meyers believes firmly in the power of
education—a belief he traces to his parents,Newton and Rita Meyers.His mother,
the youngest daughter of first-generation Russian immigrants in Beverly,
Massachusetts, overcame her father’s opposition to higher education for women
and graduated from Salem State College in 1952.Years later, as a young widow and teacher, she struggled to put Meyers and his three siblings through college.

His father, a native of Providence, Rhode Island, earned a degree from Brown
University at the age of eighteen, thanks to high College Board scores and a special Navy program in effect at the outset ofWorld War II.After serving in the war, he graduated from Harvard Business School with support from the G.I. Bill.Always fascinated with higher education, he toured college campuses with his wife and children during family vacations.

Meyers, 41, grew up in Marblehead,Massachusetts viewing higher education as
a privilege–a worthy goal, but beyond the reach of many Americans.After earning
his degree in economics from Brandeis University in 1984, he joined E.F.Hutton
and worked on Wall Street as a mail clerk until one of the firm’s traders agreed to
show him the basics of his job.Meyers’s talent for arbitrage and derivatives trading
took him from E.F.Hutton to Prudential Bache Securities, L.F. Rothschild
Unterberg Towbin, and Commodities Corporation before he became involved in
asset-backed securities financing in the later half of the 1980s.

That’s when he began to wonder whether the securities market could fund
private higher education loans at competitive interest rates.

“We’re not the first one to think of such an idea, but the argument has always been that a private capital market can’t work in education because there is nothing to use as collateral,” he said.“I wanted to prove it could work; I wasn’t thinking of starting a business.”

In 1990,Meyers and fellow trader Stephen Anbinder decided to consult a leading economist. David Breneman, then a visiting professor at Harvard who was teaching a course on the economics of higher education, agreed to go to lunch with Meyers. He was impressed by what he heard.

“When Dan described his vision to me, I realized that this was a serious and valuable idea,”Breneman said.“What impressed me most was his drive to help young people enter and complete college.”

Breneman encouraged the two entrepreneurs to start a business, providing them access to individuals who could help their dream take shape. In 1991, First Marblehead Corporation was born.

Initially, the company focused solely on raising money on Wall Street for individual colleges to use as supplementary sources of loan money. In 2000, it purchased a company to process and service student loans.After adding these services to its portfolio, First Marblehead’s customer base expanded to include banks, and it went public in 2003. In its first year as a publicly traded corporation, First Marblehead facilitated more than $1 billion in loan disbursements that supported students at more than 3,000 schools.

Breneman continued to serve on the company’s advisory board after becoming dean of the Curry School in 1995. Before long,Meyers, First Marblehead’s chief executive officer and board chair,was involved with the school, serving on the Campaign Committee in the late 1990s.

In 1998, Meyers made his first major gift to Curry.He decided to honor his parents by funding the Newton and Rita Meyers Professorship in the Economics of Higher Education.“ Higher education has had a profound impact on the lives of my family,” he said.“I believe it is the most common denominator for the development of intellect, societal behavior, and economic prosperity. Regardless of the state of a nation, its prospects are determined by this one, critical ingredient.”

As Meyers remains involved with Curry – he currently serves as vice-chair of its foundation’s board of directors and honorary chair of the campaign committee – he has become aware of its strengths and its shortcomings.

“The school’s approach to education is very practical. Instead of focusing almost exclusively on the theoretical as other education schools do, Curry responds directly to real needs. Faculty members are out there [in K-12 classrooms] developing better ways to help at-risk students—and preparing teachers who can deal with their issues.”

Visits to Charlottesville have made Meyers aware of one of the school’s major inadequacies: Ruffner Hall, its home since 1973.“The faculty is in Ruffner and the reading program is in another building altogether,” he said.“Plus Ruffner can’t accommodate new technologies such as broadband Internet, and there are few places where faculty and students can sit together and discuss big issues.When I looked ahead ten years and I realized the school would still be graduating young people from this facility to do yeomen’s work in our public schools, I knew what to do.”

His gift launches a building campaign for the Curry School.When completed in several phases and over a number of years, the new state-of-the art facility will consolidate programs scattered throughout the community under one roof and give students and faculty the capacity to collaborate and pioneer new tools for teaching and learning. Meyers’s gift honors another individual he credits with helping to form his educational beliefs.

Family friend and Boston native Anthony D.“ Wally”Bavaro played football for Holy Cross and the San Francisco 49ers until a knee injury ended his days on the gridiron.He then embarked on a 40-year career as a history teacher and coach in the public schools of Malden and Chelsea, Massachusetts.

“He was committed to teaching kids in some pretty tough, inner-city schools,” said Meyers of Bavaro, who died in 2002.“He had plenty of opportunities to move into administration, to become a principal, but he didn’t want to leave the classroom, where he believed he was really needed.”

Breneman is grateful to Meyers for giving the Curry School what it really needs.“We are honored to have somebody with a passion for education take
the school under his wing,” he said.“Dan’s service to the foundation has further revealed the depth of his commitment to helping this nation realize the Jeffersonian vision of an educated populace.”

Meyers expresses his role in simpler terms.

“I’m a facilitator at best,” he said.“I just try to get things done.”