The Pomainville Family celebrates the impact of a Regis education with a $300,000 estate gift

Roger Pomainville’s career as an entrepreneur began when he was 10, as a newspaper delivery boy in his hometown of Longmont, Colorado. He bought the papers himself, then sold them at a profit, as was the system. One day, he noticed an error in his bill for papers from the newspaper.

“I thought, ‘Geez. I’ve got to keep track of this.’ And I did. I discovered accounting and I absolutely loved it, and that’s what I’ve been doing my whole life, ever since.” Years later, as an undergraduate majoring in accounting, Roger opened a firm to handle tax returns for farmers and small businesses in rural areas north of Denver, enlisting fellow accounting students as employees. “We’d have classes in the morning, eat lunch, then get in my car and drive north to do tax returns,” he recalls. “I had to get everyone back to Regis before six so we could have dinner.” 

Roger graduated from Regis College in 1965 with an accounting degree, followed by a JD and LLM in Taxation from the University of Denver. Nearly 60 years later, he says Regis was formative to his success in business and life. The accounting skills he gained as an undergraduate provided a jumping-off point for a long and successful career in tax law, real estate and property development. The spiritual education was foundational in other, more surprising, and important ways. 

“I went to Regis because I really wanted to pick up a profession or something that I could use in the future and beyond,” he says. “But when I got there, it was kind of a shock when they told me I'm going to take 12 hours of philosophy, 12 hours of theology. And I thought, why did I end up here? What is this? What I didn’t realize at the time is that Regis taught me how to live the other 16 hours of the day,” he says. “They made me a more complete and more caring person, and they gave me direction to embrace and share all that life has to offer.” 

Roger says the Regis experience was deepened by the mentorship he received from a professor in the program, Robert Lacey, who encouraged his entrepreneurial leanings. For the past 25 years, Roger’s gratitude for that mentorship has manifested in annual gifts to the Robert Lacey Accounting Scholar Endowment, which today provides a Regis education to aspiring finance professionals through the Anderson College of Business & Computing. Roger and his family recently deepened their investment in Regis by establishing the Pomainville Family Endowment, which will provide need-based scholarship support for future accounting students. The endowment was launched with a $50,000 gift earlier this year. Roger also named the scholarship as the beneficiary of a $300,000 gift in his will that will ensure its long-term sustainability. 

“God has blessed me and my family beyond my wildest dreams,” Roger says. “By going forward with this endowment, we want to provide tuition for someone that needs it, to give them the opportunity and the many, many things in life that have been given to us. The idea that you can start something that will keep going, for someone who may be the first in their family to graduate, that’s really neat. You kind of open it up for the whole family.” 

Roger says he hopes his family’s decision to include Regis in its estate plan will inspire others to do the same. As he has told his children and grandchildren throughout their lives, "This just didn't happen, God has given us a lot and you must share these blessings with others. It's always worthwhile to give and do things for others. That's the way I’ve always tried to look at it: You never know where life will take you, but it’s a fabulous journey, and there’s always something positive in trying to make it better,” he says. “There’s always something positive in that, and it does come back to you in spades.” 

On behalf of the Regis community and the students who will benefit from this new endowment, we are grateful to Roger and the entire Pomainville family for making Regis such a meaningful part of their journey.