Business leaders shoot for funding

Some of the area’s top executives will test their basketball skills Feb. 1 during halftime at UC Irvine’s basketball game. But it’s not just because the business leaders enjoy shooting hoops.

They are all members of the university’s Chief Executive Roundtable, which was created in 1986 to form a partnership between local businesses, the community and the school.

Brian Stein, chief executive officer of Syspro in Costa Mesa, will be on the dark gray team with his team captain Henry Samueli — owner of the Anaheim Ducks and The Honda Center, as well as co-founder of Irvine’s Broadcom Corporation and the namesake of a theater in the new Renee and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall.

They’ll be competing to raise scholarship money for men’s and women’s athletics at the university.

The impetus behind Stein’s involvement stems from the company’s view that not enough support and publicity is given to UC Irvine and its students. Through sports, President Joey Benadretti said he hopes to entice more people to attend the university so that the local workforce can get a boost.

“We have a great educational institution in the area and the exposure level is not that great, even when I talk to my kids and talk about UCI, they’re talking about UCLA,” Benadretti said. “It’s wrong….The reality is if we want good people coming into the marketplace, these people should be looking to the local marketplace.”

But Benadretti said the local workforce isn’t as strong as it could be, since many students opt to attend other schools in Southern California.

“Again I’ll use my kids as an example — when they’re looking for a university, they’re thinking about big name sports schools. That’s what they read about in the paper every single day,” Benadretti said.

Even with the UC Irvine men’s volleyball team at No. 1, Benadretti and Stein maintain there’s just “no name brand recognition.”

“I think what’s important at the end of the day as responsible companies that we support the institutions in our area and that we try and give visibility [to the school],” Benadretti said.

Each team has one UC Irvine student athlete connected with it and the winning team will be giving the student $1,000. The roundtable also has raised $75,000 for athletic scholarships.

“We really want to take it to another level and do something that makes these schools attractive so local kids really want to go there,” Benadretti said.

One way to promote the school is through its athletic and arts programs, which he said the entire community should take advantage of.

But it’s also about simple philanthropy and “paying it forward,” Stein and Benadretti agreed.

“We try to do service and if people just move it along all the way down, everyone can benefit down the line,” Stein said. “So we look at what we can do to help the community.”