On Father’s Day, Paying Papa’s Legacy Forward

Courage. Loyalty. Humility. Grit. Empowerment. A drive for growth.

These are the characteristics that make for greatness. I have been blessed to learn them from my father, Dr. Abraham Pishevar. He is affectionately known as ‘Papa,’ not just to me, my siblings, and his grandchildren, but to the countless others he has touched over the years in his native Iran and his adoptive America.

Exposure to these characteristics and the ability to recognize them in others has been a key to my success as an entrepreneur and investor. None of which would have been possible without Papa’s hard-earned lessons.

My lessons started at a young age, when Papa — a respected television and radio executive in Iran — demonstrated remarkable courage in the earliest days of the Islamic Revolution. Papa made one of the most difficult decisions anyone can ever make. He left his native land to start all over again in search of a better future for himself, but most importantly, for his family — my mother, my siblings, and myself. He likes to say he came to America with $37 in his pocket. He lost his nation but gained, in his adoptive America, a new beginning for his family.

Papa worked extremely hard for a better future, including finding himself behind the wheel of a taxi cab. Through grit and resilience, that taxi was but one stop on a journey that led all the way to a PhD at Howard University. He worked multiple jobs as a taxi driver, a media generalist in DC Public schools, while working toward his PhD. He liked to tell us that he wanted his children and grandchildren to be inspired by his legacy of getting his PhD at the age of 55. His life-long dream was to become a Professor and he realized his goal after getting his PhD when he became a Professor at Ajman University of Technology.

My mother, who was also a teacher in Iran and a teacher’s assistant in America, and my father, together would constantly tell us they can take everything away from you except your education. This legacy is something that has stuck with our entire family. My brother became a lawyer. My sister became a PhD and tenured Professor by the age of 30. I was supposed to be the MD/PhD in the family but started a software company in my senior year at Berkeley. Luckily my brother-in-law, Dr. Alvin Haynes, MD made up for me in spades by also getting his MBA from the Wharton School of Business.

As one of the nation’s premier Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Howard is well known for its high-profile, successful black graduates. Vice President Kamala Harris; Toni Morrison; Thurgood Marshall; Ta-Nehisi Coates; my friend Sean Combs; the gone-too-soon Chadwick Bozeman; Phylicia Rashad, who just returned to Howard as Dean of the School of Fine Arts; the list goes on.

But what is less known about Howard — at least, outside my family and countless other immigrant families who have experienced its embrace — is the school’s long legacy as an institution that has opened its doors to other traditionally marginalized communities, including those thrust into a new country in search of its promise of possibility.

At a time when as a nation, we are wrestling with the role of immigrants and immigration policy, Howard has persevered as a welcoming beacon of hope. Guided by its motto Veritas et Utilitas, or “Truth and Service,” it is an institution that understands the undeniable truth that the talent and grit immigrants carry with us make us an invaluable resource in service of the great American experiment.

Papa and Howard share much in common and that is why, on this Father’s Day, I am so proud to announce the establishment of the Dr. Abraham Pishevar Endowed Chair at the Howard University School of Business.

In its vision statement, Howard’s business school aspires to be “a major contributor to the dialogue concerning economic empowerment for people of color and [to] be recognized for producing research on empowerment and entrepreneurship.” As someone who learned from Papa that ideas in the imagination could one day become industry-defining companies and world-changing products, it is my most sincere hope that whoever comes to hold the Dr. Abraham Pishevar Endowed Chair instills that same sense of the possible in future generations of entrepreneurs shaped and empowered at Howard University’s School of Business.

Indeed, when they do, they do so knowing they are also honoring the legacy of a great man. My father imagined a better future for his family in his beloved adoptive country and built it one resilient, gritty step after another. I am hopeful that his endowed chair at Howard will empower countless others to do the same.