Steve Gregory, inventor and founder of the Ram Jack method of foundation repair, will be honored as Entrepreneur of the Year and deliver East Central University’s Leonard Limes Lecture at 11:30 a.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 19, in the ECU Foundation Hall of the Chickasaw Business and Conference Center.
The lunch and lecture, being held in conjunction with the Tiger Tank Pitch competition, is $10 per person and those interested in attending the lunch should RSVP by Wednesday, Nov. 5 at noon. The Tiger Tank Pitch competition, involving college and high school students, is from 8:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. that same day
After graduating from ECU with a bachelor’s degree in 1968, Gregory moved and taught history in New Mexico. He returned home to Ada and took over the family pest control business one year later.
Realizing a need for residential foundation repair, Gregory quickly began thinking of ways to improve existing foundation methods and inventing his own, filing the first product patent in the early 1980s.
Under Gregory’s direction, the business has gradually evolved into many family-owned enterprises that include a manufacturing and distribution facility in Ada. These facilities produce and distribute products across America, Canada, Costa Rica and Panama. The Gregory family is also actively engaged in the remedial foundation service industry within the states of Arkansas, Oklahoma and Texas.
Gregory has issued over 20 national and international patents pertaining to foundation solutions, has written an engineering and technical manual which details the interaction of foundation systems and soils and often speaks to groups on the causes of foundation failure, prevention of foundation failure diagnostic and remedial repair of foundation problems as well as entrepreneurship and business solutions.
He currently resides in Ada during the summer months and Florida during the winter.
Limes, a geologist, attorney and entrepreneur from Konawa who lived in New Orleans, established the lectureship to emphasize entrepreneurism in 2000 with a $25,000 gift to the ECU Foundation Inc. He attended ECU for a year and a half in 1946-47 and then completed a degree in geology from the University of Oklahoma. After he went to night school in New Orleans to earn a law degree, he and two partners formed a law firm for five years. He established an oil and gas exploration company and worked as an attorney specializing in oil- and gas-related legal matters.
The Tiger Tank Pitch competition features high school and college students pitching their business ideas to a panel of judges. A first- and second-place team from each division will win cash prizes sponsored by the Ada Jobs Foundation and Ram Jack. The event is being held in conjunction with Global Entrepreneurship Week. To learn more about that go to http://genglobal.org/gew.
For more information or to make reservations contact Julie Bradam at 580-559-5274 or jbradam@ecok.edu .
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