Gish brothers stay engaged with Culver because of valuable lessons it instills

 

Garrett and Gray Gish say they stay engaged with Culver Academies because they want to ensure the school keeps teaching the lessons that have been so valuable to them.

“I think something that Culver instills from an early time frame is that you're not just one individual, that everything you're doing is part of a greater purpose and part of a greater community,” said Garrett Gish ’04.

Gray Gish ’06 said one of the most valuable lessons he learned was how to think, a message stressed by former humanities senior instructor Richard Battersby.

 “He was very deliberate in telling me that he was not there to simply teach me. He was there to teach me to think,” Gray said.

Both said they learned valuable leadership skills at Culver. Garrett said Company B counselor Paul Harris was especially helpful.

“I think he was instrumental in helping define internally for me what it meant to be in a leadership position, particularly the followership component. Because I think I really struggled with that my first couple years,” Garrett said.

Gray said the peer-to-peer leadership skills he learned at Culver have been applicable in the Marines, especially when it comes to leading diverse organizations.

Gray said he and his brother grew up in rural Texas where most kids lived on small ranches and were active in 4-H. Culver provided the opportunity for Gray to broaden his cultural horizon by meeting and living with people of varying and diverse backgrounds, such as his first roommate from South Korea.

“What a fascinating experience. At that point in life, I never thought I’d meet someone from Korea. To learn about his culture and background taught me from a young age that the uniqueness and diversity of individuals only broadens one’s knowledge as a person and a leader,” Gray said. “I took that lesson and applied it throughout my career in the Marine Corps, leveraging the strengths of different perspectives, backgrounds and cultures. It’s one of the things that binds us as Marines, as we all come from different walks of life.”

 

 

Garrett and Gray both joined the military after college.

Garrett graduated from Colgate University in 2009 with a bachelor's degree in international relations and served as a Green Beret in the Army Special Forces. He was deployed in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

“That put me in a unique position to work at the tip of the spear in terms of the Special Forces community,” he said. “There was an element of greater purpose in that job that I don’t think a lot of people have the benefit of experiencing in their careers.”

After leaving the Army in 2015 he worked briefly for the family business before getting his MBA at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business.

He then served as director of global capital for FCA Corp., investing across 11 African countries through the longest-tenured African private equity fund in the United States.

“I had an opportunity to be on the ground in a lot of geographies that most people have not visited,” he said.

In 2022 he founded U.S. International Finance Partners (IFP), a private equity group based in Houston focused on international investment in developing markets, predominantly Africa. IFP is active in 14 African countries and 19 globally.

 

 

Gray went to Dickinson College to play football and lacrosse while pursuing his dream of becoming a Naval aviator like his father and grandfather.

While in school he attended the Platoon Leadership Course, commissioning into the Marine Corps in 2010. Gray became an MV-22 pilot at the completion of flight school and has since been deployed six times in support of contingency operations and operations in Iraq, Syria and Kuwait. For the past two years he was the White House liaison officer for Marine Helicopter Squadron One (HMX-1), where he planned all of President Joe Biden’s helicopter travel aboard Marine One. He coordinated plans with the White House and Secret Service and when the president was out of the country with U.S. embassies and host nations.

On July 21 he started a yearlong stay at the Marine Corps Command and Staff College in Quantico, Virginia, which develops critical thinkers, innovative problem solvers and ethical leaders.

The Gishes journey to Culver began when their grandfather’s friend from law school, Gus McFaddin ’52, told stories about the boarding school he attended.

Garrett said when a friend from middle school told him he was going to go to a boarding school in Europe, he told his parents that he wanted to go to boarding school. They recalled McFaddin’s stories.

“I made one visit and I was like, ‘Wow, this is the place I'm going to go,’ ” Garrett said.

Gray said what drew him to Culver was the opportunity to be independent and in a military leadership environment.

 

 

Their father, Kyle, a former Navy commander and F/A-18 pilot who also flew for American Airlines for 31 years, showed his support for Culver by creating the Gish Leadership Series Fund. The fund sponsors active military or veterans to speak about their leadership experiences and lessons from the military. The first speaker was a Navy SEAL chief special warfare operator and a CMA graduate. He spoke on Veterans Day and challenged students to be worthy of the sacrifices others have made defending the United States.

“All of us, including me, have benefited from the sacrifices of our veterans. I have but one request of you all: Earn it,” said Chief C., who asked not to be further identified because of security concerns as an active-duty SEAL.

The brothers said their father wanted to do something for Culver because of the impact the school had on their lives.

“My father, as the driver of that initiative, wanted to continue adding value to the Culver experience,” Garrett said.

Both brothers encouraged other alumni who feel as though they benefited from attending Culver to contribute.

“If you walked away from Culver as a better person, then you owe it to the next generation at Culver today to pay it forward so they can walk under the arch the best versions of themselves,” Gray said.

Garrett said he considers himself an ambassador of the school.

“I think it’s my responsibility to do anything that I can do to maintain the status of the school as being an exemplary educational institution,” he said.