Befidi Family Scholarship

The Befidi Family Scholarship is created to provide assistance to promising students who are seeking a degree in Computer Service, Engineering, or Business. Students receiving a tuition waiver from employers are not eligible.

Criteria

Each recipient must be an undergraduate student sophomore, junior or senior enrolled full-time at WSU
Each recipient must maintain a g.p.a. of 3.25
Each recipient must be an African or African American Student

Biography/Motivation

In 2008 Robert and Jeannine Befidi established the Befidi Family Scholarship as an endowed fund in the Winona State University Foundation.

Robert, a native of Cameroon, attended Winona State from the Spring of 1994 to the Spring of 1996 and graduated summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science. He is currently CEO of Staff One, Inc., a leading provider of outsourced Human Resources solutions. Prior to joining Staff One, Robert co-founded Gordian Capital, a privately held investment firm where he serves as a Managing Director, with responsibility for capital raising, deal origination, industry research, transaction structuring and execution and portfolio company management.

Prior to founding Gordian Capital, Robert was an advisor to Circle Capital, responsible for deal structuring and execution in the financial services, healthcare, technology, and real estate sectors. Robert also worked as an equity research analyst on the healthcare team at Piper Jaffray and Co. (NYSE: PJC), where he covered medical technology companies. In addition to his financial services experience, Robert spent several years as a director of technology at Ingenix, a wholly- owned subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group (NYSE: UNH). In this position, he founded and grew a technology group that led the innovation of fraud and abuse analytics products. Robert was also responsible for providing technology leadership to business units across Ingenix and the UnitedHealth Group family of companies, and was instrumental in defining the strategy, planning and execution of the integration of several business acquisitions. Earlier in his career, Robert was a consultant at Systems Resources Consulting where he focused on enterprise technology architecture and development, a systems analyst at State Farm Insurance Companies, and a Tester for the IBM research lab at Winona State University.

Robert holds an MBA with Honors from the Wharton School of Business of the University of Pennsylvania, an MS in Software Engineering from the University of Minnesota and graduated Summa Cum Laude with a BS in Computer Science from Winona State University.

Robert is a past member of the Board of Directors of Alchemy Theater and past co-chair of the Service Through Technology steering committee of the Greater Twin Cities United Way. He currently volunteers as a mentor with Menttium and serves as an Entrepreneur in Residence at the Carlson School of Management of the University of Minnesota.

I have always enjoyed helping others. Growing up, my parents stressed the importance of a good education and went to great lengths to provide my siblings and me with the best opportunities they could afford. This endowment is my way of honoring my parents while helping African and African-American students at Winona State University. Robert Befidi, August 2008.