Martha Rivers Ingram is a businesswoman and philanthropist who, in the face of her husband’s untimely death, moved headlong in the role of CEO. The company flourished under Martha’s leadership, and she took her wealth and position and gave back to her Nashville community, co-founding a symphony hall and donating hundreds of millions of dollars to Vanderbilt University, earning her a spot on the list of the United States’ most generous philanthropists.
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1935
Born (USA)
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1979
Assumes first official role within Ingram Industries
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1995
Becomes CEO of Ingram Industries and both consolidates and sells off portions of the company
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1999
Inducted into the Global Business Hall of Fame
Born in Charleston, South Carolina, USA, in 1935, Martha graduated from Vassar College with a bachelor’s degree in history in 1957. After graduation, she returned to Charleston, where she worked at radio and television stations owned by her father as she pondered her next steps, both in her personal life and her career. Her father proposed that, as the oldest of her siblings, she could learn his business and be prepared to take over should anything happen to him. During the year and a half that she shadowed her father, she renewed a friendship with E. Bronson Ingram, whom she had dated during her senior year at Vasser. Friendship turned in to love, and they married in 1958.
Settled in Nashville, Tennessee, USA, where the Ingram family business was based, Bronson and Martha had four children. Although Martha spent the early years of her marriage tending to her children, she maintained an interest in the performing arts, and became determined to create a performing arts center in Nashville. “I thought we needed something like the Kennedy Center in Nashville,” she said, “because there was no place to have opera, ballet or professional theater. I wanted my children to have exposure to the arts, which was something I had too little of as a child.” She pursued the idea fearlessly, and after eight years and three governors, the Tennessee Performing Arts Center (TPAC) became a reality, surpassing the US$3.5 million endowment goal by US$1.5 million.
In 1979, Martha took on a role as director of public affairs at Ingram Industries, and in 1981 took a seat on the board. In adjoining offices, Martha and Bronson worked together, as Bronson frequently sought her advice on business matters and viewed her as his successor. Following his death in 1995, Martha became CEO and, in 1996, spun off the computer distribution arm of the business—Ingram Micro—into a separate, public entity, while maintaining the company’s other divisions—Ingram Book Group, Ingram Marine Group, and Ingram Insurance Group—under the umbrella of Ingram Industries. She sold Ingram Entertainment to her son David, and it now operates as a separate entity. Martha was inducted into the Global Business Hall of Fame in 1999 and the Music City Walk of Fame in 2017. She stepped down as CEO of Ingram Industries in 2008.
“I never had a business course as such. Whatever I learned was osmosis through my father and then through Bronson, certainly. I’ve had to read a lot of balance sheets and profit-and-loss statements in my time. I would be less than honest if I did not admit that it has turned out to be quite a lot of fun to be chairman of a big company.”
A Global Force for Good
Before her husband’s death in 1995, Martha and Bronson established the Ingram Charitable Fund to support Vanderbilt University and other charitable organizations. Martha served as Chair of the Board of Trustees for Vanderbilt University, and the Vanderbilt School of Music has received over US$300 million of Ingram company stock as a donation. The Ingram Scholars Program at Vanderbilt has given free tuition to hundreds of students, and the Ingram family has endowed more than 20 professorships and chairs across all academic departments.