Peter Lewis biography

Peter Lewis: Entrepreneurial visionary

January 8, 2001

"The $24 million contribution by Peter Lewis is a transforming gift -- one that will help the Weatherhead School of Management to move forward at a pace that would otherwise have been impossible."

-- Agnar Pytte, president of CWRU

Peter B. Lewis, chairman, president, and chief executive officer of the Progressive Corporation, brings the same sensibilities to his philanthropy that he brings to business. He invests in people with a clear, creative, courageous vision who break new ground and show results.

It is a philosophy that has worked well for Lewis. In 1965, in one of the first leveraged buyouts in history, he took control of a small Cleveland insurance company with $6 million in revenues specializing in drivers who had difficulty finding auto insurance.

Over the past 30 years, without making any major acquisitions, Lewis has transformed the 100-employee company into a full-line auto insurer with 14,000 employees and annual sales of $4.8 billion. Today Progressive is the nation's fifth-largest auto insurer and ranks among the top companies in any industry for long-term growth and total return to shareholders.

"Peter Lewis is one of the most successful executives in America, if not the world. He took an organization that was a relatively small organization and built it into a powerhouse. He did it because of innovation and creativity," said Scott Cowen, dean of CWRU's Weatherhead School of Management.

"In everything he does, from his leadership style to how he builds his organization, exemplifies for me many of the skills we need to see executives have in the 21st century," Cowen added. "So I can't think of a better person to put their name on this building.... His success embodies for me many of the kinds of things that we're trying to educate students to be in the future."

In addition to being the subject of numerous Harvard Business School case studies, Progressive has been praised by Fortune, Business Week, USA Today, and the New York Times. Michael Hammer, co-author of the influential management book Reengineering the Corporation, has called Progressive "one of the best-run companies in America."

Much of Progressive's success derives from Lewis' clear and unique vision. To Lewis, the purpose of an auto insurer is to reduce the trauma, cost, and inconvenience of auto accidents in cost-effective and profitable ways. Progressive is revolutionizing the industry by offering 24-hour immediate response claims service, rapid hassle-free settlements, and fleets of mobile adjusters who are sometimes dispatched to the crash scene, and by offering consumers free comparative rates from other auto insurers.

Progressive began collecting art in the early 1970s to create a more stimulating work environment for employees. The corporate art collection now numbers 3,500 works, making it one of the largest in the nation. The collection concentrates on new, young artists who take risks and explore new themes and modes of expression.

In 1996, Art & Antique magazine rated Progressive's art collection as one of the top five in the country, calling it "quirky and intellectual, making it one of the country's most refreshing."

Lewis continues to be a major arts patron with an extensive personal collection. He helped create and continues to support the Cleveland Center for the Contemporary Art, where a gallery was named in his honor. He serves on the board of trustees of the Guggenheim Museum and the Cleveland Museum of Art. He also has donated $1 million to his alma mater, Princeton University, for a contemporary gallery at the Princeton Art Museum. In 1995, he received an honorary degree from the Cleveland Institute of Art.

Throughout his career, in business and in art, Lewis has sought out and supported creative people who are smart, relentless, and driven to be the best. This was behind his $50 million gift in October 1995 to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, as well as his gift commitments -- which now total $24 million -- to Weatherhead's new Peter B. Lewis campus.