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.”

Learn more about giving to DePaul.

“I’ve always tried to be a gladiator for the client,” says Bill Zink (BUS ’70, MST ’77) of his career in public accounting. “If you’re going to be a gladiator, you had better have a good army behind you.”

That’s one reason Zink and his wife, Kathleen, are longtime donors to DePaul, and why they established the Kathleen A. and William J. Zink Endowed Scholarship in the Master of Science in Taxation Program. “I am devoted to the profession,” says Zink. “I want to help assure that students going into the profession have the very best education.”

Nobody does it better than DePaul”
— Bill Zink (BUS ’70, MST ’77)

In his 46-year career at Grant Thornton International, Zink has overseen the tax practice of more than 120 firms worldwide; one of his main responsibilities is the ongoing education of the tax accountants in the firm.

“The scandals of the 1990s—Enron chief among them—showed the vulnerabilities of the profession and the damage that poor training can do to companies and to the confidence of clients and the public,” Zink says. “It is essential that we have good education and training.”

Zink’s father wanted him to go to Northwestern, but at the time the school had no undergraduate business program. He chose DePaul, and when he met with the legendary accounting professor Eldred “El” Strobel, he saw his future.

“He listened to me, what my interests were and my strengths, and within minutes he had mapped out not only my academic program, but also my career path,” Zink recalls. “He was an incredibly dynamic person, a truly great teacher, passionately committed to his students and to integrity and excellence in the profession.” Strobel served as a member of DePaul’s faculty from 1946 to 1980 and is credited with establishing many of the foundations of the School of Accountancy. The school’s Strobel Scholars program is named for him.

“Kathleen and I are so happy to be able to help future generations of students have the kind of experience that I had when I was at DePaul,” says Zink. “It’s so important that tax professionals get a good education and acquire the kind of learning skills they will need to continually adapt their expertise to a changing business and tax landscape. DePaul gave my family a wonderful life together, and maybe we can do the same for others.”

When the Many Dreams, One Mission Campaign for DePaul University officially closed on June 30, gifts had topped $333 million, making it the largest fundraising effort in the history of the university.

“This Campaign has built a stronger DePaul,” says the Rev. Dennis H. Holtschneider, C.M., president of DePaul University. “Donors understand DePaul’s commitment to providing an excellent education to our students. Thanks to them, DePaul will continue to be able to attract and educate talented students from a wide array of backgrounds.”

Overall, Campaign giving to the business college surpassed $113.8 million. “Alumni and friends of the college who responded to this Campaign helped us to strengthen our faculty and our programs, our learning environments and tools, and our ability to help students fund their education,” says Ray Whittington, dean of the Driehaus College of Business.

Alumnus Richard H. Driehaus (BA ’65, MBA ’70, DHL ’02), the investment pioneer and philanthropist whose name now graces the college, made a historic $30 million gift to support an endowment fund to attract and retain top business faculty. The shortage of PhD educators needed to provide a high-quality education puts a premium on the salaries they can command and contributes to the challenge of keeping tuition costs in line. Recognizing this need, Driehaus endowed the fund to help DePaul remain nationally competitive and encourage other generous alumni to contribute so that incoming students can have the excellent classroom experiences they remember so fondly.

Campaign gifts also enabled the expansion of the business school’s Finance Lab, a virtual trading room that symbolizes the school’s innovation and academic excellence in blending leading-edge theory with real-world practice. The lab supports graduate and undergraduate courses in portfolio management, risk management, investment, financial engineering and quantitative methods by providing Bloomberg Terminals with live financial market information as well as other data sources and analytical tools.Additional donor support will enable the college to keep up with technological innovations and expand its business facilities and career services.

More than $106 million in new scholarship funding was raised during the campaign. Ryan Daliege (BUS ’11) expresses his gratitude for the generosity of Campaign donors:

“DePaul provided me with an excellent education in finance, but it never could have happened without my scholarship,” says Daliege, who is back at DePaul in the MBA program while working as a financial advisor for Ayco Company, a Goldman Sachs company.

DePaul thanks its many Campaign donors and invites other grateful alumni to continue the momentum of this historic fundraising Campaign.

Joe Silich (BUS ’92) is one of the preeminent wealth advisors in the nation. But he has never forgotten his working-class roots on the southwest side of Chicago or his first-generation college experience at DePaul.

“DePaul allowed me to identify that gift inside of me—in my case, a gift for numbers,” he says. “My teachers helped me find it, nurture it, and build my knowledge. In the process, they helped me build confidence. That foundational education is a kind of ‘muscle memory’ that has served me well in my career and in life.”

As executive director at Morgan Stanley, he leads the Silich Group of wealth advisors for the firm. He has garnered numerous accolades throughout his career. He was named one of Barron’s magazine’s top financial advisors nationwide in 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013. He makes frequent appearances on MSNBC, CNBC, Bloomberg and other media outlets. Throughout his career, he has been careful along the way to share his gifts and his success with the community.

At DePaul, Silich serves on the DePaul University Finance Advisory Board and the Driehaus College Campaign Committee. He works with the college to develop intern-ship opportunities for students, and personally coaches and mentors DePaul students and young alumni. His community commitments are numerous and wide-ranging. To name a few, he serves on the Chicago-based board of UNICEF, the Midwest Board of the USO, and the advisory board of Operation Homefront, which provides support for families of service members and wounded warriors across the country.

In 2010, as part of the Many Dreams, One Mission campaign, Silich established the Silich Family Endowed Scholarship for talented DePaul students in finance who, like him, grew up in Chicago and attended city public or parochial schools.

More than one-third of DePaul students are the first generation in their families to attend college. “I worked throughout school, as most DePaul students still do,” Silich says. “But I never lost sleep over midterms or finals or papers. What I did worry about was paying the semester tuition bill. I know what my education has meant to me. If I can ease that financial anxiety for talented students, help them focus more effectively on their studies, help them gain practical experience and develop their gifts, help them succeed and take their education out into the world to benefit their families and communities—that is how I measure true success.”

By Chris Anderson