University of Georgia to honor Aflac’s Dan Amos with name on business school building

Aflac Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Dan Amos will have a building named after him at the University of Georgia, honoring the alumnus for his support of the school.

The university said Friday a groundbreaking ceremony for Amos Hall and the second phase of the “Business Learning Community” will take place Sept. 18 in conjunction with a celebration of the completion of Correll Hall. Amos also will speak at the event.

The Business Learning Community, a complex of buildings that will be home to UGA’s Terry College of Business, is being funded by a capital campaign that wrapped up in June, with Amos serving as its national chairman. He also is a former chairman of the University of Georgia Foundation and a member of the school’s board of trustees.

UGA raised $121 million during the capital campaign, easily exceeding its initial goal of $90 million. The money is being spent university-wide on facilities and support for faculty and programs, it said.

“I was honored to be asked to chair this capital campaign and am humbled by the notion that the Amos name will forever be linked to this incredible learning institution,” Amos said Friday in a statement from his company.

The CEO acknowledged making personal donations to the fund-raising effort — the amount he did not disclose — to encourage other alumni and university supporters around the nation to give generously as well.

“I was pleased to do so and I will continue to support UGA so that future generations will have the opportunity to learn from some of the greatest business minds in the nation,” Amos said.

The new business school facilities include classrooms, project rooms and a business innovation lab, with Correll Hall comprised of 74,000-square-feet of space and home to graduate programs. The second phase of the project, which includes Amos Hall, should be completed by 2017 and will add 140,000-square-feet to the complex, which is for undergraduate studies. That includes a couple of large auditoriums, classrooms, a music business recording lab and other amenities.

“The new Business Learning Community is a great example of the strong public-private partnerships that the University of Georgia relies on to create the kind of world-class learning environment that a major research institution requires,” University of Georgia President Jere Morehead said in a statement.

Correll Hall is named in honor of alumni A.D. “Pete” and Ada Lee Correll. Along with Amos, Pete Correll, who is chairman emeritus of Georgia-Pacific, will be speaking at the Sept. 18 event, as will Morehead and Terry College Dean Benjamin Ayers. Two business school students also will offer their thoughts on the new facilities that day.

Correll and Amos will speak at a leadership lecture that morning as well.

Amos is a graduate of the University of Georgia, earning a bachelor’s degree in insurance and risk management. In 1973, he took a sales job at Aflac, a company founded in 1955 by his father and two uncles. The company, which markets and sells supplemental health and life insurance policies in the U.S. and Japan, has grown steadily through the years.

Rising through the ranks, Amos was named CEO in 1990, followed by chairman of the firm’s board of directors in 2001. Under his leadership, Aflac revenues have grown to just under $3 billion a year to $22.7 billion at the end of 2014.

It was in the year 2000 that he made what many consider his most fortuitous decision — the launch of the Aflac duck advertising campaign. That move propelled the company to higher profits and brand-name recognition already commanded by such iconic business giants as Coca-Cola and McDonald’s.

In the September edition of Georgia Trend magazine, Amos was included on a list of people who have “influenced and changed” Georgia over the past three decades. It mentions the Aflac duck campaign, his ethical practices, relentless work in the battle against childhood cancer, and the fact that there have been no mass job cuts during his tenure at the top, with the CEO giving up chunks of his executive compensation during the Great Recession.

This story was originally published September 11, 2015 at 1:11 PM with the headline "University of Georgia to honor Aflac’s Dan Amos with name on business school building."