Tim R. Garde, a 1978 Penn State graduate in accounting, has committed $50,000 to the Smeal College of Business to establish the Tim R. Garde Trustee Scholarship, which aims to help support the financial needs of deserving students.
Garde comes from an entrepreneurial family and started his career with his family’s drug distribution and medical equipment company, the publicly-held Spectro Industries. There, he eventually served as the company’s senior vice president of marketing and chief operating officer of the medical equipment division.
After Spectro was acquired by McKesson in 1985, Garde rose through a number of ventures in his career, including serving on a senior-level management task force to start a new business entity for at Bristol-Myers Squibb. He then moved into a position with Vox Medica’s Healthcare Marketing Communications Group in Philadelphia, where he eventually became executive vice president and general manager.