Jesuit High School of Tampa's Mike Petters '77 speaking on Veterans Day - 11-11-16

Описание: Mike Petters ’77, the CEO of America’s largest military shipbuilding company, Huntington Ingalls, who donates his nearly million-dollar salary to workforce training and scholarships for children of employees, addressed the Jesuit High School of Tampa student body Friday (Nov. 11) at Convocation on Veterans Day. Petters, who also spoke to three Jesuit classes on Nov. 11, was honored as a Lone Sailor Award recipient in 2015, a prestigious award presented by the U.S. Navy Memorial Foundation. Petters is the eldest of five brothers who all graduated from Jesuit in the 1970s and ’80s, and he earned a physics degree from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1982. As CEO of Huntington Ingalls in Newport News, Va., the only builder of aircraft carriers in the U.S., Petters made national news this year with the announcement that all but $1 of his $950,000 salary would go toward his employees and their children. “It’s a chance to give people the chance to create a little bit different future for themselves,” said Petters, who was raised on a large orange and cattle farm in the community of St. Joe in Pasco County. “Somebody did that for me; I’m lucky enough to have the chance to do it for others.” Prior to his 29-year shipbuilding career, Petters served aboard the nuclear-powered submarine USS George Bancroft and spent five years in the U.S. Naval Reserve. In 1993, he earned an MBA from the College of William and Mary. Petters serves on the board of directors for the U.S. Naval Academy Foundation, the National Bureau of Asian Research, and the Virginia Foundation for Community College Education. He also serves on the board of trustees of the Naval Aviation Museum Foundation, the distinguished advisory board for the Dolphin Scholarship Foundation, and several other boards.