Orville E. Beal

BA ‘37, MBA ‘54
President
The Prudential Insurance Company of America

Profile 

Orville E. Beal served as the ninth president of the Prudential Insurance Company of America. He came to the company in 1926 via the coal mines of Pennsylvania. Mr. Beal started as a $15-a-week clerk, and worked his way up the corporate ladder by day while studying at Rutgers by night - first as an undergraduate in the depression-era thirties, and two decades later as one of the first MBA candidates at the then-new Graduate School of Management. He completed his BA in 1937 and his MBA in 1954, graduating Phi Beta Kappa and Beta Gamma Sigma. By 1945, Prudential had named him a vice president. In 1954, he relocated to Minneapolis to head the company’s north central operations. He returned to Newark in 1957 as an executive vice president and was named president on October 1, 1962. 

Recognized: May 10, 2001