Jerry Robinson
Blacksburg Rotary Club

Jerry Robinson was president of our Rotary club during 2003-2004.  He joined a few months after the club was chartered. 

Jerry is from Memphis, Tennessee and attended Rhodes College in Memphis.  He earned a Masters Degree in Economics from Duke University.  His first teaching position was at Furman University in South Carolina, teaching labor economics and he became intrigued by the degree to which business affects communications in a community. He then taught at the University of Missouri, Columbia, where he also headed a program to teach leadership and negotiations to labor union personnel throughout the state of Missouri.  Later he earned his doctorate in employment relations and management at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.  He accepted a position at Virginia Tech in 1970 expecting to only stay for a short period of time, but fell in love with the area and has been here ever since.  He was faculty president for two years.

Jerry is married to Anne.  They have one son and two grandchildren.  Jerry was Chairman of the Montgomery County School Board for two years and on the Board for eight years.  He hired five different superintendents in that period.

He has been able to merge his activity with Rotary with his teaching at Virginia Tech.  He has taken over 1100 students overseas for study.  He has used the connections of Rotary to set up appointments at businesses overseas.  “The club has allowed me to establish connections worldwide.  I actually helped to form a new club in Slovenia.”  Today he is active in consulting with a national retailer as well as doing management assessments for a firm in Seattle and writing a regular column for a business publication.

Back to Past Presidents