Rich Moran RC’72, who has been a successful entrepreneur and served as a college president, today is a winemaker and prolific author.
For many of his generation in New Jersey, Rich Moran says the goal was to graduate from high school, get a good job with a pension, retire early, and move down the shore.
But at age 18, he knew he wanted more. Having shown promise as a runner in high school, he was recruited to run track and cross country on a scholarship at Rutgers–New Brunswick. Part of a big Irish Catholic family who lived in Rahway, New Jersey, Moran was the first in his family to go to college.
“It wasn’t that my family had low expectations or high expectations—there were no expectations,” he says. “It was more like, ‘Do the best you can, son, but you’re out of here when you’re 18.’ College wasn’t their world.”
Moran’s memoir, which was released this week, has been called “a raucous, tender-hearted tale of planting the seeds of your passions and cultivating the life you want.”
Moran earned his English degree from Rutgers College, which set him on his path of success and accomplishment.
“I loved Rutgers, loved being a student there,” he says. “It was such a special time to make friends. Going back for my 50th reunion was fun. Seeing a lot of friends I still had, that affiliation came right back. From that time, I still have a slew of friends because the college was small, and we shared a lot of camaraderie.”
The Class of 1972 was the last all-male class to graduate from Rutgers College, whose enrollment at the time was a fraction of what Rutgers–New Brunswick hosts today.
“I was at Rutgers between 1968 and 1972—there probably has never been a more dramatic, exhilarating, crazy time to be on a college campus than in those four years,” says Moran, who was active in his fraternity Delta Upsilon and a writer for the yearbook, the Scarlet Letter. “I learned about making choices, taking risks, and being ambitious. My time at Rutgers was very meaningful.”
Succeeding in Spite of Not-So-Great Expectations
Moran’s years at Rutgers instilled in him a love for higher education in general. “I loved college so much, I wanted to stay in,” he says.
So, after graduation, he went to Indiana University Bloomington to earn his master’s degree in college student personnel. He then served as dean of students at the University of North Alabama and went to Miami University in Ohio to earn his Ph.D. in organizational behavior.
After earning his doctorate, Moran moved west to Silicon Valley to work for Atari. His career took a turn into consulting where we worked as a Partner at Accenture and as a venture capitalist at Venrock. He stayed on the West Coast, where nearby Menlo College recruited him to become their president.
“They needed someone who had a Ph.D., someone who knew Silicon Valley, and someone who could orchestrate change, and so I might’ve been a set of one,” he says. “It was a lifelong dream. I think most people who take the job think of it in terms of drinking from the fountain of wisdom, eating the fruits of knowledge. But none of that is true. It’s more about managing a pretty complex organization.”
‘They Don’t Make Movies about Soybeans’
For the next chapter of his life, Moran is expanding his writing career. He has already written 10 business books on management, like Never Confuse a Memo with Reality and Cancel the Meeting, Keep the Doughnuts, most of which, he says, have the theme “stop doing stupid stuff.”
His newest book, The Accidental Vineyard, which was published this week, is a real departure. The real-life story begins with him and his wife Carol driving through California, trying to get their fussy infant son to take a nap. They drove by an old fixer-upper house for sale and ended up buying it.
“Then the story becomes, how does a guy like me, who doesn't know anything about fixing things up or about developing a vineyard, do both?” he says.
With four children, they ended up splitting their time between wine country and San Francisco, “where there’s schools, and lattes, and plumbing.” They committed to renovating the house while maintaining the architectural integrity of this 1870 structure, with help from the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
“Carol was on this journey with me the whole way, and when we bought the house we said, let’s take our time, let’s enjoy this ride,” he says. “It’s 10,000 square feet, so there’s no small projects here. Let’s not rip out all the walls and put in new features and fixtures and finish this in two months. Let’s take our time and enjoy it.”
The “accidental” part came when the manager of a neighboring 600-acre vineyard came over and offered to give him—and plant for him—an extra 1,000 cabernet plants they had over-ordered. Then the next day it was merlot plants, then Syrah.
“We had no intention of planting a vineyard, but by accident, by them over-planting, we got a vineyard,” Moran says. “The wine community is small, and it’s a joy to be part of that community. They don't make movies about soybeans but think of all the movies that they’ve made about wine, because there’s a romance to it all. It is gratifying to actually hold something that I made. I’m lucky. I’m happy and lucky.”
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