Saying he’s nothing without the people who work for him, the CEO of an e-commerce startup has started a college fund to pay his employees’ children’s college tuition.
Chieh Huang, head of the wholesale shopping app Boxed, said he wanted to make the company life-changing for its workers. Since education allowed him to better his life, he wanted to give the same chances to his employees’ children.
The 33-year-old entrepreneur was the child of Taiwanese immigrants who struggled to land decent paying jobs in the United States. To make ends meet, his father worked in retail and his mother was a cashier.
Despite coming from humble beginnings, Huang graduated from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, then went on to Fordham Law School.
He was a corporate attorney and led a gaming company before launching Boxed in 2013.
“If I didn’t go to college or if I didn’t have the education that I did, it would be very difficult for me to do what I do now,’’ he told Entrepreneur magazine.
Huang has created the fund with his own cash and stock, which is estimated at $1 million to $2 million.
All 60 full-time employees of Edison, N.J.-based Boxed have the tuition plan available for their children. Twelve children will eventually be eligible so far.
The son of the head of logistics at a Boxed warehouse will be the first person to benefit from the fund. Joseph Bobko, the employee, had to use some of his son’s college fund to pay for surgery that his son needed and was not covered by the family’s insurance plan.
With help from his boss, Bobko will get $20,000 for his son’s college tuition in the fall.
Huang’s generosity comes at a time when college tuition is rapidly increasing. Annual tuition and fees, excluding room and board, average $31,231 a year for a four-year private college and $9,139 for a public four-year university, according to the College Board.
Huang, whose company offers shoppers a convenient way to shop at big warehouse stores such as Costco, hopes his generosity encourages employees to stay with the company long term.
Already he has seen positive results. Since creating the fund, he has been inundated with resumes from people who want to work for him.
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