Entrepreneurs Promote Good Business

The Callais family — whose entrepreneurial businesses include marine transportation, banking and waste management services — announced a donation of $450,000 recently to the A. B. Freeman School of Business and the Tulane Family Business Center.

Gloria, Corey, Michael and Monica Callais made the pledge.

Gloria Callais pledged a gift of $300,000 to establish a professorship in honor of her late sons Peter W. Callais, a 1986 Tulane graduate, and Paul A. Callais, who received an MBA from Tulane in 1993. She also announced a donation of $100,000 to provide an undergraduate business scholarship in honor of Peter Callais. In addition, Monica Callais, wife of the late Peter Callais, pledged a gift of $50,000 to name the Tulane Family Business Center Library in honor of her husband.

“We are extremely appreciative of this generous gift made by the Callais family in support of entrepreneurial studies,” said Angelo DeNisi, dean of the Freeman School. “They are a wonderful family and their charitable gift will enable us to advance family business education throughout the region and continue growing our nationally ranked entrepreneurship program.”

Members of the Callais family have been active members of the Tulane Family Business Center since 1994. The center, which is operated under the auspices of the Freeman School's Levy-Rosenblum Institute for Entrepreneurship, provides continuing education to assist family owned enterprises.

The Callais family currently owns and operates four companies in Southeast Louisiana: Abdon Callais Offshore in Golden Meadow, SWeeDee Solid Waste Disposal in Houma, Community Bank in Raceland and United Community Bank in Gonzalez. The family also founded Callais Cablevision, which operated for 35 years before the family sold the company in 2003.

Mark Miester is the editor of Freeman magazine for the A. B. Freeman School of Business.