$1 M gift includes the Gail and Bob Knight Distinguished Professor of Accounting

With their latest gift, Gail and Bob Knight continued a longtime stream of support to FSU and the Herbert Wertheim College of Business, including a gift in 2020 to name the Gail and Bob Knight Auditorium in the college’s world-class new home. On April 9, the auditorium will host its first "Movie Knight" for students with a free showing of "The Social Network."

Gail and Bob Knight continue to make Florida State University – the place they met and launched a photo empire – their investment focus.

Their latest contribution establishes the Gail and Bob Knight Distinguished Professor of Accounting at FSU’s Herbert Wertheim College of Business, where Gail earned a degree in accounting in 1982. The $500,000 gift is part of a $1 million investment that also includes $500,000 to establish the Bob and Gail Knight Distinguished Professor of Audiology in the FSU College of Communication and Information, where Bob earned a degree in speech communication in 1981.

The Knights’ gift continues a longtime stream of support to FSU and the Wertheim College, including a gift in 2020 to name the Gail and Bob Knight Auditorium in the college’s world-class new home, the Herbert Wertheim Center for Business Excellence.

“We’re grateful to Gail and Bob for their remarkable support and generosity and for their continued spirit of giving back and making a difference,” said Michael D. Hartline, dean of the Wertheim College. “The Gail and Bob Knight Distinguished Professor of Accounting will stand as a testament to their devotion to FSU, the Wertheim College, our faculty and our students.”

‘We owe a lot of it to FSU’

Gail Knight celebrated her 2025 induction into the Herbert Wertheim College of Business Alumni Hall of Fame with her husband, Bob, and their sons, from left, Tim, Danny and Tommy.
Photo by Kallen M. Lunt Click to enlarge

Gail Knight, a 2025 inductee into the Wertheim College of Business Alumni Hall of Fame, serves as a member of the executive committee on the college’s Board of Governors. She said her five years as a board member have strengthened her understanding of the competitive landscape in recruiting and retaining the world’s top faculty members. Their endowment will financially support one or more faculty members who demonstrate exemplary teaching and research. 

Explaining the reason for the couple’s extraordinary record of giving to the college and university, she said: “It's simple. When you look back on our success and everything that we've achieved in our life, we owe a lot of it to FSU.”

“We were in business on campus and well beyond for 45 years,” Bob Knight said, referring to their company, Bob Knight Photo. “So, every time we turned around, there was a milestone for Florida State and for us. So, by the time we retired, we knew we had to really give back.”

Their gift to endow an accounting professorship was inspired by Gail’s time as an accounting student at FSU and her belief in the power of a career in accounting.

“From the time I was old enough to understand, my father kept saying, ‘You need to be an accountant because bean counters run the world,’” Gail said. “And he was right. My accounting degree really helped us be successful.”

‘The numbers queen’

Here's Gail and Bob during their time as students at FSU. They met in 1980, married four years later and built the largest commencement photography company in Florida and California. They chronicled their journey in a book, "Married to It: How an Entrepreneurial Couple Built a Photography Empire by Investing in Their Customers, Staff and Each Other."

The Knights met at FSU in 1980. Bob had launched a photo business on campus and had accounts with the university’s fraternities and sororities. One day, he showed up at the Alpha Gamma Delta sorority house, urgently needing to speak with the sorority’s treasurer about a payment. 

As Bob recalled, the treasurer came down the house’s stairs and said, “Hi, I’m Gail” – three words that launched a lucrative life for Gail and Bob as co-founders of Bob Knight Photo. They married four years later, in 1984, and guided the company from a fledgling party-pic operation at FSU to the largest commencement photography company in Florida and California. 

A certified public accountant and a fourth-generation FSU graduate, Gail used skills she gained from her accounting degree to balance the books, emphasize analytics and manage the business, negotiating pricing for special events at The Walt Disney Company, for example. That deal resulted in more than 6 million photos over 15 years. 

“I was the numbers queen,” she said.

She and her team also managed a three-year transition from analog to digital photography and created GradTrak®, a workflow system that became an industry standard. And after 15 key acquisitions, the company’s GradImages™ brand earned service contracts with most of the nation’s universities and nearly 150 marathons per year, including five of the world’s major races, leading to nearly $100 million in annual revenue.

The Knights in recent years have expanded their giving to include various initiatives within Seminole Boosters, Opening Nights, academics and campus facilities. Their gifts to Seminole Boosters included a major investment to improve the FSU softball program’s facilities and to send the team to London. “We’ve become quite attached to their program,” Gail says.

The couple retired from the photo business in 2019 and zoomed in on their alma mater, expanding their giving to include various initiatives within Seminole Boosters, Opening Nights, academics and campus facilities, including the Herbert Wertheim Center for Business Excellence. Their gifts to Seminole Boosters included a major investment to improve the FSU softball program’s facilities and to send the team to London. “We’ve become quite attached to their program,” Gail says.

After they retired, Bob said, he and Gail contacted deans from their respective colleges and asked what they needed. “We told them we were in a philanthropic mood,” he said.

Their naming of the Gail and Bob Knight Auditorium, a 300-seat showcase space on the ground floor of the Wertheim Center, pays tribute to the decades they spent taking photos in arenas and auditoriums.

Elaborating on the couple’s inspiration for continued giving, Gail said: “If it's not for FSU, we don't meet. If it’s not for FSU, Bob doesn't start that photography business.”

She added: “FSU is and will continue to be our No. 1 philanthropy.”

-- Pete Reinwald