Every time Texas-based tech executive Steve Blum returns to his beloved alma mater in swampy Florida, he can’t help but smile.
As an electrical and computer engineering student, he played intramural sports and savored time with fraternity brothers, many of whom remain friends. He cheered on the football, baseball, basketball and, frankly, any team sporting the orange and blue. The 1987 graduate met — and courted — Wendy, now his wife, on the University of Florida campus.
But it is not just the ghosts of Gator Nation that still have the Blums chomping. The future of Gator Engineering thrills him as much as the basketball team’s annual march to madness. As the executive vice president and chief operating officer of software company Autodesk, Blum sees the UF campus through a much different lens these days, and he loves the view.