With a $5 million gift to fund a chair for Lehigh’s new College of Health, Ellen and Vincent Forlenza ’75 are investing in that college’s future and seeking solutions for health care issues that affect populations around the country and the world. The Ellen and Vincent Forlenza ’75 Chair in Health Innovation and Technology Endowed Fund will enable the college to recruit the very best talent in a fiercely competitive market.
“Having spent 40 years seeing health care systems around the globe—and their challenges with access, sustainability, clinical care, chronic disease and patient satisfaction—I think there are tremendous opportunities to solve problems and start something new,” said Vince Forlenza, executive chair of the board of Becton Dickinson (BD), an American multinational medical technology company.
The Ellen and Vincent Forlenza ’75 Chair was created to launch the College of Health’s department of health innovation and technology, where innovators will develop health applications for artificial intelligence, advance analytics and data science, and design cutting-edge devices and technologies to address urgent needs in population health.
President John D. Simon ’19P said the Forlenzas’ gift is “foundational.” He also expressed appreciation for Vince Forlenza’s help in planning to make the college a reality. The college opened Aug. 21, 2020.
The Forlenzas believe in the college’s mission to educate population health leaders who will have an impact on the community, nation and world.
“The challenges of health care are not going to be solved on a patient-by-patient basis,” Ellen Forlenza said. “They’re going to be addressed by looking at the whole system as a big picture. All these big needs touch individual lives.”
The challenges of global health care have been Vince Forlenza’s focus for most of his career. He graduated from Lehigh with a bachelor of science in chemical engineering and worked in the chemical industry while earning his MBA from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. He began in BD’s industrial group in 1980, working for three years before moving over to the health care side of the business. He celebrated 40 years with the company in June 2020, retiring in January 2020 as CEO and becoming
executive chair of the board.
Story by Cynthia Tintorri
