Alumni Fellows
Alumni Fellow Award
The Alumni Fellow Award is the most prestigious award given by the Penn State Alumni Association. Since 1973, the Alumni Fellow Award has been given to select alumni who, as leaders in their professional fields, are nominated by an academic college and accept an invitation from the President of the University to return to campus to share their expertise with students, faculty, and administrators. The award is a cast bronze medallion and framed certificate.
2007 Smeal College of Business Alumni Fellow
Peter J. Cocoziello ’73 is president and CEO of Advance Realty Group. Advance is a leading developer of Class A commercial properties in the northeastern United States, specializing in real estate development, construction, and property management.
The company began in 1979 when Cocoziello purchased a vacant lot in West Orange, NJ, where he developed his first property, a 14,000-square-foot office building. From there, he moved on to developing family homes and townhomes, then to build-to-suit commercial office properties. Today, the company owns more than 5-million-square-feet of commercial buildings stretching from New Jersey to Washington, D.C., has more than 4,000 housing units and 3-million-square-feet of commercial space in the development process.
Cocoziello is the recipient of the Young Presidents’ Organization Legacy Award, the 2005 Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Association of Industrial and Office Professionals (NAIOP), and the 2004 Outstanding Business Person for Somerset County (NJ) Business Partnership. He was also named the Ernst & Young’s 1990 and 2003 New Jersey Entrepreneur of the Year, Real Estate Division.
Cocoziello serves as chair of New Jersey Network Foundation, is the founding governor and trustee of the NAIOP Research Foundation, and is past chapter chair of the Young Presidents’ Organization. Cocoziello is a life member of the Penn State Alumni Association.
A member of the Board of Visitors for the Smeal College of Business, he and his wife, Sharon, have supported the college with the construction of the Peter and Sharon Cocoziello Real Estate Suite. They have three children: Peter John, who graduated from Cornell University in 2006; Daniel, who attends Princeton; and Alex, who attends Cornell.
