WILMINGTON — The Pete du Pont Freedom Foundation has returned to form and announced that a prominent executive will be honored with its prestigious Freedom Award – Rob Siegfried of the The Siegfried Group is its 2025 honoree.
Siegfried is a Delaware native and proud University of Delaware alum who is the founder and the CEO of The Siegfried Group, a Wilmington-based accounting firm with 19 offices nationwide. After earning his bachelor’s degree in accounting and economics from UD, he started his career at Arthur Young.
In 1988, he founded Siegfried, a relationship-driven, entrepreneurial organization that helps CFOs and executive teams deliver long-range company goals. The company has been recognized as one of Inc. magazine’s 5,000 fastest growing companies in the past and has close to 1,400 people. Siegfried boasts of working with 350 Fortune 1000 companies and various other start-ups and ventures in various stages of their life cycle.
“We look at folks and organizations that have made innovative impacts within the private sector, and a connection to Delaware is a wonderful bonus. I believe Rob represents all that, as well as building a business across the country,” Pete du Pont Freedom Foundation Executive Director Stephanie Johnnie said. “Anyone who does business with Siegfried in Delaware knows the company, and they’re very impactful.”
One aspect that set Siegfried apart was his continued charitable donations in time and money. He worked with Junior Achievement of Delaware’s board to create a five-year plan, and he and his wife Kathleen and the company worked to pay down the organization’s debt and set it on the right path.
Siegfried has also established the Siegfried Youth Leadership Program, a leadership development program for students in grades 8 through 12, as well as their teachers and mentors. That program coordinates closely with Junior Achievement of Delaware, UD Center for Economic Education and Entrepreneurship and Horn Entrepreneurship.
Siegfried made history earlier this year when he and his wife made the largest single donation to UD in its history. The $71.5 million gift will help fund the construction of Lerner College’s Siegfried Hall which will be a state-of-the-art learning space with research and teaching labs as well as a student-run cafe and an auditorium.
UD also will develop a new Siegfried Institute for Leadership and Free Enterprise, an “idea lab” that will study “the critical role basic principles of limited government, rule of law, and free enterprise play in supporting individual freedom and leadership.”
While the Pete du Pont Freedom Foundation celebrates private enterprise, Johnnie said the board of directors had selected Siegfried for the honor even before it knew he had made the donation to UD.
“That was a pure coincidence. The board is constantly looking at leaders every single year to see who could be nominated. A part of our selection process is that our Freedom Award recipients are also asked to participate in an intimate session with our Foundation members, which we don’t sell tickets to,” Johnnie said. “That means we are looking at people looking to share their expertise with our members who are the next set of emerging leaders. Rob represents that attitude as well.”
The award will be presented at an in-person ceremony at the Hotel du Pont on Sept. 10 which the foundation said would hopefully encourage attendees to patronize other downtown Wilmington businesses before or after the event.
Tickets for the event are available at www.petedupontfreedomfoundation.org
