Palm Beach Atlantic University

Palm Beach Atlantic University

Palm Beach Atlantic University launched in 1968 as a private nondenominational Christian college in downtown West Palm Beach. Its board includes Scott G. Hawkins, while Dr. Debra A. Schwinn serves as president. The university educates students across nine colleges and maintains financial oversight through CFO Stacie Bowie, who stewards assets that include the endowment, a main campus on Flagler Drive, and a growing physical footprint in South Florida. The endowment operates as a fund-of-funds allocator, channeling capital into external investment vehicles rather than building a direct portfolio. Its physical holdings are substantial: a main downtown campus at 901 S Flagler Drive, an athletics campus, a 25-story residence hall project on South Dixie Highway, the Marshall and Vera Lea Rinker Business Hall, and student housing facilities. The university also houses the Tauni de Lesseps Art Collection in its Warren Library. Professional affiliations tie it to the Palm Beach business community through the Chamber of Commerce and to academic standards through AACSB business school accreditation. Financial backing flows through philanthropic structures including the Johnson Scholarship Foundation and the Marshall and Vera Lea Rinker Foundation, with additional benefactor relationships such as Ray Titus of United Franchise Group, who established the Titus Center for Franchising on campus. The endowment's scale and specific deployment numbers remain undisclosed, though totaling in the low hundreds of millions (Altss estimate). The structural differentiator is a university endowment embedded in a fast-growing coastal city, holding real estate assets alongside a fund-of-funds investment program — combining a traditional campus portfolio with modern allocator architecture, and maintaining distinct philanthropic foundations that supplement the endowment's capital base.