REPRINTED WITH PERMISSION

September 9, 2024

Kourtney Gibson

Senior Executive Vice President,

Chief Institutional Client Officer, TIAA

Of all the great mentors and sponsors who have crossed Kourtney Gibson’s life, one especially stands out: her cousin, James Reynolds, founder of Loop Capital, a preeminent privately held investment bank.

 

“Jim made sure that I was in the room when things were happening,” Gibson said, referencing the song in the Hamilton Broadway musical, “The Room Where It Happens.”

 

“Looking back on that exposure and those opportunities, I’m forever grateful for that,” Gibson, senior executive vice president and chief institutional client officer at TIAA, said of her time at Loop.

Her 20-year career at the firm started when she was just 16.

 

Being from Racine, Wisc., Gibson knew nothing about Wall Street, saying investment banks were not prominent in the Midwest, but she accepted Reynolds’ invitation to work at Loop nonetheless.

 

“I just knew he was going to pay me a nice little amount that was more than the minimum wage that I was making at the shoe store I was working at,” she said, recalling the 16-year-old self who had planned to be a pediatrician.

 

“It sucked me in,” she said of the business of finance.

 

Reynolds reinforced what she had long learned from her mother about giving back.

 

Gibson recalls how Reynolds and his partner contributed the check they received for their first bond underwriting deal with Chicago Public Schools.

 

Rather than using the money to celebrate over a lavish meal, they took “that first check and donated it,”
Gibson said.

 

Gibson connects her experience at Loop to TIAA, where she runs the company’s core business, retirement solutions, which accounts for $740 billion of TIAA’s $1.28 trillion in assets under management.

 

“It really does tie back to this mission of serving those who serve others,” she said, alluding to TIAA’s
status as the nation’s leading retirement services provider to nonprofits.

 

— MARGARIDA CORREIA

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