February 22, 2016

Ed Littleton grew up in the Upstate of South Carolina and graduated from USC in 1985 with an accounting degree. But he jokes that he had to move to Texas to reconnect with his alma mater.

“My wife [Wendy, ’86 Nursing] and I had kind of lost touch with Carolina over the years,” Littleton says. “But several years ago, Hildy Teegen, dean of the business school back then, was meeting with alumni in the Dallas area. I developed a good relationship with her and got plugged back in with the university,” Littleton says.

A senior vice president of risk management at a large construction firm in Dallas, Littleton is now serving on a steering committee for a new risk and uncertainty management program in the Darla Moore School of Business. And the Littletons have further reconnected with Carolina by creating a planned gift through a life insurance policy that will one day provide unrestricted funds to the Moore School.

“Costs are going up for the university, and state support for higher education is not,” Littleton says. “We see our gift as an opportunity to support the school and the broader goal of creating a more educated citizenry.

“I am active with the United Way in Dallas, and that’s one of the things we’re focused on: getting people out of the cycle of poverty by creating pathways for more education. The cycle never changes without that.”