Alumnus donates $250,000 to business school

Gregory Lai, MBA ’88, has made his largest donation ever to UCI’s Paul Merage School of Business. The $250,000 Greg and Cindy Lai Endowed Undergraduate Student Award will support Merage students. “I believe that the Merage School is at another inflection point and in the next decade or so will break into the top 20 among all national universities,” Lai says. “Now is the time for us to lead this new way of giving.” His connection to UCI is a family affair. Lai’s father, Gary, was a member of the chemistry faculty. Gregory Lai was working on his MBA and serving as a chemistry department teaching assistant when he met his wife, Cindy, who earned a B.A. in social ecology in 1992. Lai says UCI is the perfect place to create their legacy because the campus is like home and Anteaters are family. “You have to trust in the long term,” he says. “You only get to build that future by investing in today.”