Gerald B. Smith, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Smith Graham & Co., shared the same narrative as many well-known leaders in the financial industry who started out in obscurity. He got his start working in a department store that sold men’s sportswear. He started off as an associate buyer but quickly moved up until he was hired by Houston, Texas-based investment bank Hibbard, O’Conner & Weeks in 1974.
Gerald joined the first African American company, Dillon, Read & Co., which specialized in the fixed-income sector and provided trading and portfolio management advice after he gained experience in trading. Six years later, in his first foray into entrepreneurship, he collaborated with others to launch the New York Futures Exchange. The business engaged in the trading of financial futures contracts.
He has since alternated between working for trading companies and financial enterprises. He joined the Westcap Corporation, where his duties included boosting institutional trading and national sales. He was a senior vice president and director of fixed-income securities at Underwood Neuhaus & Co. before starting his $1 billion company.
After seeing his fair share of financial market successes and tribulations, Gerald and Ladell Graham founded Smith Graham & Co Investment Advisors, LP. in Houston, Texas, in 1990. Since then, the organization has expanded into other areas, including as Taft-Hartley plans, corporations, public funds, and endowments. The company presently has institutional equities, fixed income, and mortgage and real estate debt assets valued at over $6 billion.
His efforts have been focused on convincing institutional investors to use financial futures to hedging their interest-rate risk, according to history makers.
Gerald was born on September 28, 1950, in Houston, Texas. He attended Jack Yates High School there until 1968, when he graduated with a B.B.A. from Texas Southern University. He has had the chance to serve in additional roles since his success with Smith Graham & Co., including as a trustee of different funds of The Charles Schwab Family of Funds and later as a director of Cooper Industries.
Additionally, he served as the main independent director and presiding non-management director of Cooper Industries PLC, as well as a director of Northern Border Partners, L.P. In 2007, Black Enterprise listed Gerald as one of the 50 Most Influential African Americans on Wall Street. His services to society have also been recognized by other academic institutions; Texas Southern University awarded him an honorary doctorate.
2015’s Annual United Negro College Fund Gala also honored Gerald and his wife as Excellence in Education Honorees. In 2015, he received the National Economic Empowerment & Entrepreneurship Award from The 100 Black Men Association of America and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Greater Houston Black Chamber of Commerce.