#48 Jennifer Chandler | Spanish Teacher to $86 Billion

About the episode

At 20 she was teaching high school Spanish. Today she runs Bank of America in North Texas and an $86 billion practice for foundations.

More on Jennifer Chandler and this episode: thedealtablepodcast.com/episodes/jennifer-chandler

Jennifer Chandler holds two jobs most banks split between two executives: North Texas president, with roughly 14,000 colleagues, and head of the bank’s national endowment and foundation practice, the largest outsourced chief investment office in the world at approximately $86 billion for family foundations, hospital systems, and college endowments.

She finished the University of Texas in two and a half years and graduated at 20. Too young, by her own account, for a big institution, so she taught high school Spanish instead. Then Dean Witter took a bet on her, put her through an interview where a room of psychiatrists made her sell a pen over the phone, and sent her to the Twin Towers.

The through-line is a claim most philanthropy executives soften, and she does not: capitalism and giving are one flywheel, not opposing forces. She is blunt about the rest of it too. Giving money away well is harder than making it, she says no roughly 90 percent of the time, giving is up while the number of givers falls, and sometimes the honest advice to a nonprofit is to merge or close. Her practical warning to anyone approaching an exit: set up the family foundation before the liquidity event, not two months before closing.

Jennifer Chandler is the North Texas president of Bank of America and leads the bank’s national endowment and foundation practice, which manages approximately $86 billion. A first-generation college student, she graduated from the University of Texas at 20 and began her career as a high school Spanish teacher. She is the incoming chair of the Dallas Regional Chamber.