AlumAwardsWebBanner8-11 Mark Alperin '80:  Dartmouth Alumni Award Recipient, 2009—10 alperinaward280 Mark Alperin '80 was presented the Dartmouth
AlumniAward by Janine Avner '80, Alumni Council
president,at the Class of 1980 Reunion,
June 19, 2010.


It is pure fact, not fiction, that green blood does run through the veins of the Alperin clan. With eight of your relatives graduating from the Big Green, you had a pretty good idea where you would matriculate.  However, your father, Mel Alperin ’58, and your uncle, Barry Alperin ’62 ’63Tu (both former Alumni Award recipients), took no chances.  Each year, your birthday, November 4th, typically landed during the week of the Dartmouth-Yale football game.  Guess where Mark celebrated the majority of his childhood birthday parties?  As long as everybody wore green, they were just fine.

Dartmouth was everything you had hoped for and more.  Immersing yourself in a wide variety of activities, you joined Bones Gate fraternity, participated on the lacrosse team and travelled to Blois, France for the Language Study Abroad program.  Majoring in engineering sciences and economics, you have commented that the faculty taught you lifelong lessons about breaking down a problem, laying it out, and then solving it step by step.

Following graduation, it was off to Chapel Hill to obtain your MBA from Duke University.  The next stop was a short, but very successful, stint as the business manager for the Washington Redskins.  We like to give you full credit for the Super Bowl they won while you were there!  The next five years were spent in New York City serving as vice president of strategic planning for L.F. Rothschild, Unterberg and Towbin, a full-service investment-banking company.  Making your way north towards your hometown of Providence, Rhode Island, you joined your family business, Pawtucket Fasteners (now called Vertex Distribution).  For more than twenty years, you have worked for this importer and distributor of fasteners and currently serve as the Chief Operating Officer and President.

Following in the footsteps of your father and uncle, you have worked tirelessly on behalf of your alma mater.  Fundraising to support today’s students has been your primary goal as you have served as a member of the Will to Excel Campaign executive committee; vice-chair of the Dartmouth College Fund; head agent; and reunion giving committee chair.  Dartmouth finally ran out of fundraising awards to present to you and thus provided you with the ultimate recognition:  you are now the only living alumnus with a Dartmouth fundraising award named after you.  The Mark R. Alperin Award is presented each year to a head agent one to five years following graduation.  In addition to all of your fundraising work, you have interviewed student applicants; served on the Alumni Council; participated on the Tucker Foundation Board of Visitors; and were recently elected to the Association of Alumni Executive Committee.  In 1994 the College honored you with the Young Alumni Distinguished Service Award.

Although you are obviously busy, this lengthy list of career responsibilities and Dartmouth volunteer roles is just the tip of the iceberg.  You and your wife, Kathy, are the very proud parents of your son, Mickey, and twin daughters, Carly and Tracy.  Currently serving as president of the Board of Trustees at their Dedham Country Day School, you have also clocked many hours on the fields, coaching them in soccer and baseball.

John Sloan Dickey ’29, Dartmouth’s twelfth president, once said, “However else the Dartmouth spirit may manifest itself, it does give rise to a sense of family, to a sense of belonging to something together.”  For the last thirty years, you have supported your Dartmouth family and it seems so very appropriate that you are receiving this award tonight surrounded by your classmates and family members.  In recognition of your extraordinary dedication to your community, family and alma mater, we proudly present you with the Dartmouth Alumni Award.