UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Scot and Lisa Warren have made a $400,000 commitment to create the Warren Early Career Professorship in Accounting at the Penn State Smeal College of Business.
Early Career Professorships provide financial resources for faculty members in the first decade of their careers to actively undertake research that can form the foundation of a successful academic future. These positions can also sustain their growth as educators by providing flexible funding for curricular development.
The Warrens’ commitment will leverage a $100,000 match from Penn State as part of the University’s Faculty Endowment Challenge, creating an initial endowment value of $500,000.
The Warrens said they consider the ability to have an impact by volunteering with the organizations that matter most to them to be more rewarding than only providing financial support. For Scot, a 1986 Penn State alumnus with a degree in accounting, that means sharing his time and talent with Smeal accounting students and faculty.
“Every college dean hopes to meet someone like Scot Warren. His career success demonstrates the value of his Smeal education, but his passion for connecting with our students and faculty and his drive to foster an even better accounting program here at Smeal stand out for me,” said Charles H. Whiteman, John and Karen Arnold Dean of the Smeal College of Business.
“He and Lisa understand how important it is for our students to be exposed to great researchers and educators, and their gift to create the Warren Early Career Professorship in Accounting will help ensure that our students learn from the best and brightest in the field.”
Scot said he considers himself fortunate to have attended Penn State and to receive “an outstanding education” that was the foundation for a career that would take an unexpected turn.
Following graduation, Scot joined Arthur Andersen as an auditor. He said he realized that auditing was not the right career path for him and moved to spend some time on the consulting side of the business before accepting a position with a regional broker-dealer — a move he said changed his career trajectory.
Scot earned a master’s in financial markets and trading from Illinois Institute of Technology in 1996.
After roles at Goldman Sachs and CME Group, he joined The Options Clearing Corp. (OCC), the world’s largest equity derivatives clearing house, as executive vice president of business and product development in 2015. He has been the chief operating officer since 2019 and oversees OCC's financial risk management, operations, project management, business process optimization, finance, accounting and business development.
Despite his professional accomplishments, Scot called his roughly 30-year partnership with Lisa (whom he met at Arthur Andersen) and their three children, including one second-generation Penn Stater, his greatest joys.
Lisa earned a degree in business administration from the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School in 1987 and an MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management in 1997. She spent five years as an auditor at Arthur Andersen and was subsequently named vice president at Heller Financial in Chicago. While she is no longer in the workforce, “she has done more community service than anyone I know,” said Scot.
Scot said it has always been important to him and Lisa to do more than write a check to the organizations that matter to them. They want to be hands on and make a difference.
“When my kids were swimmers, I was a USA Swimming official. When my son joined Boy Scouts, I became a leader. Lisa is the same way. She leverages her financial skill and talent to support so many organizations in our community. She’s a member of the Lake Zurich Community Unit School District 95 School Board, treasurer of the District 95 Educational Foundation, and is active in our parish and the Saint Vincent de Paul Society,” Scot said. “If all we can do is write a check, we will. But it’s so much more meaningful for us to have a hands-on impact.”
Scot brings that philosophy to Penn State, where the Warren Early Career Professorship in Accounting is just one way he hopes to positively influence accounting education.
He joined Smeal’s External Accounting Advisory Board earlier this year, and he travels to campus regularly to share his experience with students as a classroom guest lecturer and mentor.
Scot fondly recalled the educators who had the most influence in his life, including a high school teacher who helped him see that he wanted to study business and a Smeal accounting professor who taught his senior-year auditing class and reinforced there was much more to accounting and auditing than the technical skills.
“Smeal students are so bright and motivated, but even the best and the brightest won’t reach their full potential if they don’t have great people instructing and inspiring them,” Scot said. “It’s important to us that students have access to professors who can inspire them to do great things, and our gift is one way we can help do that.”
With the record-breaking success of “A Greater Penn State for 21st Century Excellence,” which raised $2.2 billion from 2016 to 2022, philanthropy is helping to sustain the University’s tradition of education, research and service to communities across the Commonwealth and around the globe. Scholarships enable our institution to open doors and welcome students from every background, support for transformative experiences allows our students and faculty to fulfill their vast potential for leadership, and gifts toward discovery and excellence help us to serve and impact the world we share. To learn more about the impact of giving and the continuing need for support, please visit raise.psu.edu.