Pamplin College of Business announces Distinguished Alumna Award
Apple Computer vice president Bridget Ryan Berman, a resident of Maplewood, N.J., and a graduate of St. Gertrude High School in Richmond, Va., has been selected as the 2005 Distinguished Alumna of Virginia Tech’s Pamplin College of Business.
Berman, who received a bachelor's in business administration from Virginia Tech in 1982, will be honored at the college’s commencement ceremony on Saturday, May 14. The Pamplin College created the Distinguished Alumnus Award in 1990 to honor alumni for outstanding career accomplishments and contributions to the college.
As Apple’s vice president and chief operating officer of retail stores, Berman has responsibility for the 105 stores that the company owns and operates throughout the United States, Japan, and the United Kingdom. She joined Apple last summer after 23 years in department and designer store retailing.
Berman was formerly group president of Polo Ralph Lauren Retail. In her 12 years at Polo, she was responsible for the strategic development and operations of the full-price and outlet store divisions in the United States and Europe. She served on the company’s executive leadership team and on the board of directors for RL Media (Polo.com).
Starting her career at Allied Department Stores, Berman later joined the Rich’s division of Federated Department Stores in Atlanta and moved to New York to work in product development for Federated. She returned to Virginia to work at Thalhimers, a division of May Department Stores. At Federated and May, Berman worked in executive positions in merchandising and store management. She has served on numerous executive and advisory committees throughout her career and was recently invited to serve on the Virginia Tech Foundation Board. She gave a campus lecture in March 2002 as the Pamplin College’s First Union Securities Distinguished Speaker.
Berman serves on the Dean’s Council at New York University’s Wagner Graduate School for Public Service and is active in alumni activities at St. Gertrude High School in Richmond. She is married to Roger Berman, a management consultant, with whom she has a son, Reese, and two step sons, Andy and Coby.
