Carl Mammel: Helping Others Succeed
Carl Mammel: Helping Others Succeed
By Bill Wax
The support of thousands of individuals, corporations, and charitable foundations has helped make Bellevue University Nebraska’s largest private college or university. As the University celebrates its 50th anniversary, we look at a few of the key individuals and organizations whose financial support helped make it happen. Carl Mammel of Omaha wanted to help make a college degree more accessible for Latino and other minority and low-income students from South Omaha.
Carl G. Mammel Jr. of Omaha combined talent, entrepreneurship, and a steady focus on lofty goals to become a visionary leader in the insurance and employee benefit sales industry. His highly successful career enabled him to give back, helping many others be more successful, including minority and financially needy students at Bellevue University.
Working part-time while a college student in the 1950’s, Mammel learned he had a knack for sales and an interest in the insurance business. After completing his degree in University of Nebraska-Lincoln College of Business Administration, he began his career with Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company in Omaha in 1955.
In 1959, Mammel and business partners launched what eventually would become Mammel, Schropp, Swartzbaugh, Engler and Jones, Inc., an innovative consulting firm providing services in executive and employee benefits and wealth-transfer planning. The company grew and became the top employee benefits firm in the region. Mammel retired in 1991 after the company merged with Redland Group, a diversified national property and casualty insurance firm, which was renamed SilverStone Group in 2001.
Mammel has a strong track record of supporting and serving numerous non-profit organizations and causes in the area, and is a long-time supporter of Bellevue University’s outreach scholarship program benefiting Latino and other minority and low-income students from South Omaha and beyond. “Contributing to that scholarship program was probably one of the most rewarding contributions we ever made, because we have an opportunity to see what we’ve done,” he said during the University’s annual luncheon where scholarship donors and recipients meet.
“I look at the students, and I know we made a difference for them. Every year, we come and have lunch with some of them and learn about them, and the surprising thing to me is that they are not students just out of high school. Many are in there 20’s or even early 30’s, and they were going back to get their degree. And I could see what had been accomplished with these students.”
In 1995 he established the Mammel Family Foundation, which has been a major benefactor of the Omaha Symphony Orchestra, Children’s Hospital and Medical Center, and many others. He is a past member and Chairman of the Board of the Omaha Community Foundation. In 2015, he was inducted into the Aksarben Court of Honor for his extensive service and contributions to philanthropic causes over the years.
Bellevue University conferred an honorary Doctor of Commerce degree on Mammel in 2008, in recognition of his professional accomplishments as well as his contributions of time and philanthropy.