Ron Lyles

 
A message from Ron Lyles (FC '00):

My wife Jennifer and I joke that we're the Brady Bunch, without Alice. Between the two of us, we have four kids in the Floyd Central family, three of them are still walking the halls right now, and our oldest, graduated from FCHS in May. I graduated from New Albany in 2000, so my own colors are red and black, but my day-to-day life runs entirely FC now, and I'm at peace with that. This isn't really an alma mater thing for me.

I shipped out to the Marine Corps two weeks after I graduated high school, and I spent eight years there before coming home to build a career in healthcare finance. Today I'm a Vice President in Healthcare Economics at Humana, on the actuarial side, which basically means I spend my working life finding financially balanced ways to support our nation's seniors. I bring that same instinct to how I think about giving.

Here's how I look at it. I start from a principled perspective: primary and secondary education is probably one of the most important things we can do as a society, let alone as parents. And what I like about the Education Foundation specifically is that it's one of the few things left that's generally not controversial. It's a net good. It aligns with core values almost everybody already holds, whatever else they might disagree about when it comes to schools. That's rare, and it's worth supporting because of it.

I don't think this stops mattering once your own kids graduate, either. A strong public school system is something you invest in for now and for later, and that principle holds even for people in this community who don't have kids in school at all. Everybody benefits from a strong primary and secondary education, whether or not it's your own kid in the classroom.

I'd ask you to join me and my family in supporting the Education Foundation. Every gift between now and December 11th makes a difference, and I'd be glad to have you with us.

Ron Lyles