Investment Manager Lori Holland Gives Back to Honor the Past, Secure the Future
By Chris Anderson
When Lori Holland (BUS ’84) says she has “basically been working at the same place for 20 years,” she characteristically understates how far she has come in her career.
As managing director and a senior advisor on the multiasset class team at the private investment firm of Neuberger Berman, Holland, a south suburban native, has come a long way from the secretarial school graduate who worked as an administrative assistant at Harris Bank. It was there that she discovered DePaul.
“I grew restless in my job,” she remembers. “Thankfully, Harris offered tuition assistance to encourage employees to finish college.” DePaul’s evening courses fit her full-time work schedule. But she found more than convenience. She found a challenging, yet supportive undergraduate education in finance. “Suddenly, I looked at my transcript and saw that it said sophomore,” Holland recalls. “I remember thinking ‘I really can finish and get the degree.’”
Her DePaul education jump-started her career and led her to move from the bank to a job in an investment firm even before she finished her degree. She joined the boutique firm Lincoln Capital Management as one of the founding members of the fixed-income division.
Holland went on to earn her MBA from the University of Chicago. When Lincoln Capital Management was purchased by Lehman Brothers, she moved there and became a managing director of client services, eventually overseeing the function for the institutional business globally. Holland later emerged from the Lehman collapse as managing partner Neuberger Berman and now serves as a senior advisor on the multiasset class team.
Holland sees a good foundational education and continuing to learn as keys to adapting to change—in any field. During her career rise, she returned to teach as an adjunct instructor in DePaul’s Department of Finance. She joined and later chaired the Finance Advisory Board, and began making regular annual contributions. She helped to fund the advisory board’s endowed scholarships, including one that honors retired Finance Chair Ali Fatemi. Then, during the Many Dreams, One Mission Campaign, she made a major contribution to endow a scholarship in her parents’ name. The John and Regina Letsos Endowed Scholarship benefits finance students in good academic standing who have financial need.
For Holland, who now serves on DePaul’s Board of Trustees, providing future generations of DePaul students the opportunity for a life-changing education is a personal commitment.
“The students are amazing,” she says. “And DePaul remains the same, with first-rate faculty who truly care about students and a mission to really serve students and the community. My parents never had the opportunity to go to college. But they sacrificed a lot to send me to an excellent Catholic high school and always encouraged our education. They would be proud of this gift, and honored.”
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