Navigating Davidson’s Future With a Firm Financial Foundation

As a student, Peter Beard ’83 never questioned whether Davidson was the right place for him. As an alum, he never questions whether it’s worthy of his support. The answer to both is a clear “yes.”

Beard’s grandfather, A. Lyndon Augustus Foscue, was a 1920 Davidson grad and successful business executive with Union Carbide, and when it came time for his two grandsons to start touring colleges, Foscue took them on what Beard called the Southern circuit.

“I was a sophomore in high school at the time, and we went to Virginia Tech, Wake Forest, Duke, Chapel Hill, Davidson, maybe UVA,” he said. “I thought Davidson was the right place, and when the time came, I applied Early Decision.”

Beard’s career has welcomed several different chapters, from corporate law to nonprofit organizations to financial institutions. What he discovered along the way, through roles at Habitat for Humanity and focusing on affordable housing at Fannie Mae, was a passion for mission-focused organizations and improving communities and lives.

“Over time, I became more convinced that in order to address generational poverty, it was going to take helping people get better jobs and finding better pathways to those good jobs,” he said. “That led me to Houston and the United Way and then to the Greater Houston Partnership, where I lead its UpSkill Houston initiative, focused on developing work on middle-skill talent pipelines for Houston’s employers.”

Beard’s job requires him to stay up to date on the composition of the country’s ever-changing workforce, so he asks these questions: How do we embed additional hard skills into the curriculum at a place like Davidson? How do we develop the skills employers can value no matter what role you take in their organization?

“Davidson is building some of this into the curriculum already, which means our credentials as alums become even stronger in the marketplace,” Beard said. “This idea of adding elements that reflect the changing nature of what liberal arts is, particularly in an economy that’s moving to more knowledge-based, tech-enabled needs—we have to be able to navigate that.”

Beard has included Davidson in his estate plans to help support Davidson’s exceptional educational offerings well into the future. He wants students to be able to attend their first-choice school, just as he was able to do, and to be well prepared for whatever the world needs from them when it is their time to enter the workforce.

“The scholarship I support was created by my grandfather in memory of his brother, Thomas, who graduated in 1932,” Beard explained. “He established it with an outright gift, and we added to the fund after my grandmother passed away. Higher education is only getting more expensive, and the people you meet at Davidson are always extraordinary, so a firm financial foundation is required to ensure the school’s quality continues and students continue to have great outcomes.”

When you support a scholarship at Davidson College in your estate plan, you are helping prepare students for lives of leadership and service. Contact Dawn Smith at 704-894-2103 or dasmith@davidson.edu to discover the ways you can make an impact for generations of students to come.