Vice President, Trust Marketing
Amalgamated Bank of Chicago
John was a Dean's List student at ISU. He and his wife, Stephanie, are both 1997 graduates of Illinois State University 's MBA program.
He is pictured at Amalgamated's Chicago headquarters.
Area of Finance specialization: Financial Institutions Management
Hometown: Champaign, Illinois
One was FIL 370 Educational Investment Fund. It was about as close as you can get, in a classroom, to what I did in my job in investment consulting. It also provided connections with people working in the investment world; each student got to job shadow an EIF Board member. The other was CJS 101 Introduction to Criminal Justice Sciences. It was a big lecture class I took during my last semester, mainly to offset the workload in heavyweight senior finance classes. But it turned out to be extremely interesting, and getting the second-highest grade out of the 310 enrolled was a nice morale booster.
Going to a concert at Braden that had Pearl Jam, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, and Smashing Pumpkins all on the same bill. I also fondly remember getting an A in the very difficult advanced financial theory course.
I started my career as an institutional investment consultant. My job was to determine, for clients that included a $23 billion retirement fund, whether an investment manager was delivering good returns. I was expected to know a lot of financial fundamentals the day I started, and also know a lot about spreadsheets. Things I knew from my finance courses helped me in my analytical work, and also helped me answer some tough questions in the interview process. Now I'm on the other side, with a bank and trust company that manages investments, from stocks and bonds to real estate and hedge funds, for large union pension funds. Knowledge from the whole range of finance courses, including futures and options, is still is important to me. It also prepared me well for my graduate level finance course work.
If you work hard and show genuine interest, you will find the faculty to be friendly and approachable, and your rapport with them will enrich your learning experience. I got a lot out of my time at ISU by always giving my best effort, especially in EIF, a type of course that not many undergraduate finance programs are able to offer.
