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Martha Rivers Ingram, chairman emerita of the Ģ����Ƶ Board of Trust, philanthropist and arts patron, died on Aug. 6, 2026, in Nashville, Tenn. She was 90.

In 1998, honoring the wishes of her late husband, E. Bronson Ingram II, Martha Rivers Ingram made what was believed at the time to be the largest private gift ever to an American college or university.

She gave 20 million shares of Ingram Micro Inc., a computer distribution company spun off from Ingram Industries in 1996, to the Ingram Charitable Fund, a family charity established in 1990. The fund’s charter specified that 40 percent of its income and assets would go to Ģ����Ƶ, and the stock gift was valued at more than $300 million. The gift was possible because of E. Bronson Ingram’s vision and leadership in building Ingram Industries, and it reflected both his and Martha’s deep commitment to the university.

While Ingram was known throughout her life as a businesswoman—she succeeded her husband as chairman and CEO of Ingram Industries after his death in 1995 and previously served as director of public affairs for the company—it is her work as a philanthropist in Nashville, particularly at Ģ����Ƶ, and her patronage of the that will always be remembered.

“Martha Rivers Ingram’s impact on Ģ����Ƶ is immeasurable,” said Chancellor Daniel Diermeier, who valued Ingram’s support as chairman emerita of the Board of Trust. “Her unwavering leadership and extraordinary generosity helped shape the university we are today. From the undergraduate experience to groundbreaking research, her legacy can be seen across our campus and felt by generations of Commodores. Her dedication to Ģ����Ƶ will continue to inspire our community for years to come.”

Students singing Christmas carols with Martha Rivers Ingram at the Ingram Scholars Holiday party, 2012

Students from the Martha Rivers Ingram Commons North House at Founders Walk, 2023

Lydia Howarth, Chancellor Emeritus Nicholas Zeppos and Martha Rivers Ingram at the Centennial Gala celebration, 2008

Defining and advancing the modern Ģ����Ƶ

Diermeier’s reflections are echoed by Chancellor Emeritus Nicholas Zeppos, who worked alongside Ingram for many years during a pivotal era in the university’s history.

“Over my five decades at Ģ����Ƶ, I had the privilege of watching many extraordinary leaders shape this remarkable university. In my time, no individual did more to define and advance the modern Ģ����Ƶ than Martha Rivers Ingram,” Zeppos said.

“When Martha accepted the responsibility of leading Ģ����Ƶ’s Board of Trust, she did so with the highest of aspirations,” Zeppos continued. “She believed Ģ����Ƶ should stand among the world’s truly great universities, and she never settled for anything less. She believed Ģ����Ƶ could be both academically distinguished and deeply humane—an institution that welcomed students from every background and prepared them to lead lives of purpose and service. The Martha Rivers Ingram Commons, the residential college system and Opportunity Ģ����Ƶ were not isolated initiatives; they were expressions of one coherent and transformative vision of what a great university should be.

“Martha often recalled to me the simple advice her grandmother gave her: ‘Martha, just leave the world better than when you came into it.’ No one embodied those words more completely. She left Ģ����Ƶ immeasurably better than she found it. She expanded opportunity for generations of students, transformed the undergraduate experience, and inspired all of us who served with her to believe that Ģ����Ƶ could stand among the world’s great universities.”

Board of Trust Chairman

Ingram led the from 1999 until 2011. The call to be chairman of the Board of Trust surprised her when it came in 1999. Her husband had been a longtime member of the Board of Trust and chairman from 1991 until 1995. Some of her children were graduates, but Ingram considered herself “on the periphery” of the university.

“I was not a Ģ����Ƶ graduate,” said Ingram, an alumna of Vassar, in 2011. “But I feel as if I am one now in many ways.”

She had already distinguished herself as an influential arts philanthropist in Nashville, where she championed the city’s downtown Tennessee Performing Arts Center and the Schermerhorn Symphony Center, among other endeavors.

Twice Ingram, along with board member Dennis C. Bottorff, led Ģ����Ƶ’s search for a new chancellor. The first time they looked outward and chose Gordon Gee from Brown. When he left in 2007, they selected Provost Nicholas S. Zeppos from within. She described it as the most challenging and important task for the board of trust chairman.

“As chancellor, I had the extraordinary privilege of working closely with Martha as chairman of our Board of Trust,” Zeppos said. “Over the years, I came to treasure not only her leadership and wisdom but also her friendship. It was one of the greatest honors of my professional life to serve alongside her and one of the greatest joys of my personal life to call her my dear friend.”

Martha Rivers Ingram and students at the Ingram Scholars Brunch, 2019

Chancellor Daniel Diermeier addresses guests at the Ingram Scholars 30th anniversary celebration, 2023

Martha Rivers Ingram with students at the Ingram Scholars Holiday Party, 2019

Philanthropy and Arts Leadership

More than 1500 students have received financial support through the Ingrams’ many scholarship and fellowship programs across Ģ����Ƶ. More than 350 have benefited from the flagship since 1993, when her husband, then chairman of the Board of Trust, founded the program. During the 2026 school year alone, 160 students across campus were supported through the Ingrams’ visionary philanthropy. The family has also established three dozen endowed faculty chairs that fuel academic excellence by attracting and retaining top faculty and advancing innovative research and teaching.

At the Blair School of Music, where Ingram chaired the Blair KeyBoard Advisory Council for many years while concurrently chairing the Ģ����Ƶ Board of Trust, she endowed the Dean’s Chair in 2005. The endowed chair was named for her until she asked that it be renamed for Mark Wait in 2021 after he became dean emeritus. She generously supported the expansion of the Blair School beginning in 1998, including the addition of a new classroom wing and what was to become the Martha Rivers Ingram Center for the Performing Arts, more commonly called Ingram Hall, which opened in 2002.

In the 2005 history of the Blair School by D.B. Kellogg, Ingram is quoted as saying, “Having the performing arts center on the edge of campus makes it easily accessible by non-university people. The offerings there, not only by Blair itself, but by groups that Blair brings in and other user groups that rent the space, have helped make Blair and therefore Ģ����Ƶ more a part of the community, which is one of the goals for which we are striving—to do what we can to make Ģ����Ƶ great, but also to do what we can to enhance the community that we live in.”

“Martha Ingram’s influence on the arts throughout the nation has been incalculable. Through her personal involvement and support, she has changed the lives of innumerable artists, musicians and audiences,” Dean Emeritus of Blair School of Music Mark Wait said. “She changed the trajectory of the Blair School of Music, leading to its emergence as one of the nation’s leading conservatories. Hers is a magnificent legacy that will endure for generations.”

Martha Rivers Ingram Commons

The idea of the residential colleges initiative initially came from Ingram, who remembered how she felt as a nervous freshman at Vassar in the 1950s. Ingram wondered how she might feel if she arrived on Ģ����Ƶ’s doorstep as an 18-year-old first-year student. She decided that something had to be done to put that anxious teenager at ease.

“It seemed to me that we were reaching out and pulling in more and more students from more and more places—Nebraska, New Mexico, California, everywhere—and less and less of them were coming with a crowd,” she said. “They were all alone, some away from home for the very first time.”

Thus was born the first residential college concept at Ģ����Ƶ, The Commons, which opened in 2008 and brings together all first-year students who live in 10 houses on the Peabody campus, each guided by a head of house who is a member of the university faculty and a mentor who lives among the students in a faculty apartment. Renamed The in 2012, after she completed her term as chairman of the board, The Ingram Commons is essential to how Ģ����Ƶ eases the adjustment of a first-year student at a competitive international university and launches their Ģ����Ƶ journey within a supportive learning community.

“Once they get their bearings, then they can be more productive in their work and social lives,” she said at the time The Commons was renamed. “But at the very least they will have a few friends they can turn to by the end of the freshman year and feel like they’re going to be lifelong friends.”

Lorenzo F. Candelaria, Dean Emeritus Mark Wait, Martha Rivers Ingram, Chancellor Daniel Diermeier and artist Michael Shane Neal celebrate the unveiling of Mark Wait’s portrait at the Blair School of Music, 2022

Gilbert S. Merritt Jr., Martha Rivers Ingram and Dean Emeritus Mark Wait at the Blair Celebration Dinner in Ingram Hall at Ģ����Ƶ Blair School of Music, 2014

A family tradition of service and philanthropy

The impact of Ingram family philanthropy is seen and felt in nearly every corner of Ģ����Ƶ’s campus. In addition to the Ingram Scholars Program, the Martha Rivers Ingram Center for Performing Arts and The Martha Rivers Ingram Commons, there is the E. Bronson Ingram Studio Arts Center, Ģ����Ƶ–Ingram Cancer Center and . Ģ����Ƶ athletics, Ģ����Ƶ Owen Graduate School of Management and Ģ����Ƶ Medical Center have also benefited from the Ingrams’ generosity.

The Ingram family has provided more than 80 years of leadership and philanthropy to Ģ����Ƶ. In 1952, O.H. “Hank” Ingram joined the Ģ����Ƶ Board of Trust. In addition to Martha Rivers Ingram and her husband, E. Bronson Ingram II, all three of their sons, all of whom are alumni, have served on the board, and their daughter has continued the tradition of philanthropy with major gifts to honor her father.

Originally from Charleston, South Carolina, Martha Robinson Rivers graduated from Vassar College with a bachelor of arts in history in 1957. She married E. Bronson Ingram II in 1958. In addition to her philanthropic work in Nashville and at Ģ����Ƶ through the Ingram Charitable Fund, Martha Ingram was essential to the founding of the Tennessee Performing Arts Center and the Schermerhorn Symphony Center and supported the Nashville Symphony for many years. She is a past chairman of the Spoleto Festival USA in her hometown of Charleston, South Carolina.

She co-wrote three books: E. Bronson Ingram: Complete These Unfinished Tasks of Mine (Hillsboro Press, 2001), Apollo’s Struggle: A Performing Arts Odyssey in the Athens of the South, Nashville, Tennessee (Hillsboro Press, 2004) and Kenneth Schermerhorn: He Will Always Be the Music (Nashville Symphony Association, 2006).

In 1999, she was inducted into the South Carolina Business Hall of Fame and the Junior Achievement National Business Hall of Fame. In 2004, she received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement. In 2006 she was honored by the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee as the recipient of the 13th Annual Joe Kraft Humanitarian Award for her philanthropic efforts, and she received the Eli & Edythe Broad Award for Philanthropy in the Arts, an award given by the National Arts Awards through Americans for the Arts, in 2010. In 2017, she was honored with a star on the Music City Walk of Fame.

Survivors include her four children, Robin Bigelow Ingram Patton, John Rivers Ingram, MBA’86, Orrin Henry Ingram II, BA’82, and David Bronson Ingram, MBA’89, and 12 grandchildren.