By Faye S. Wolfe

Under Doug Berthiaume’s leadership as its CEO and chairman, the Waters Corporation has developed cutting-edge products, pursued innovative business methods, greatly expanded its enterprise, and experienced an era of record growth in sales and profits. The Milford, Massachusetts, firm is a world leader in liquid chromatography, mass spectrometry, and thermal analysis, complementary technologies that provide essential measuring tools for the pharmaceutical and biotechnical industries. For example, when a baby-food manufacturer purees peaches or a drug manufacturer produces a pain reliever, chances are they use Waters Corporation instruments to test them for impurities before they go to market. In March 2006, an industry publication put Waters on its list of the top 50 life-sciences firms, “providers of the most indispensable enabling technologies,” in the country. Waters’s reach is truly global. Last summer, it announced an alliance with China’s premier food-safety and environmental centers to provide technology and expertise in the area of food-safety standards—just the latest development in its relations with Chinese labs and agencies, which date back to 1983.

Given Berthiaume’s exceptional command of the business of business, it’s highly gratifying that he believes that UMass Amherst is a worthy investment. He and his wife, Diana, recently committed $5 million to the campus. Doug Berthiaume graduated from UMass Amherst with a bachelor’s in business administration in 1971 and is a founding director of the UMass Amherst Foundation. In the “Gift of the Week” column in the Wall Street Journal last fall, Berthiaume was quoted as saying, “It’s become clearer that to maintain a world-class university, whether state-funded or not, you need to raise philanthropic funds.”

Says Thomas O’Brien, who just retired as dean of the Isenberg School of Management, “Doug understands that the competitiveness of UMass Amherst depends on alumni support, and he believes that its promise is more important than ever. He and Diana are investing in the future of Massachusetts and its residents. Their generosity is an inspiration for all of us.”