Peter Stillman:

On leaving Princess Anne, I went to the University of Virginia, where I took a B.A. degree with Honors and was in Phi Beta Kappa and the Jefferson Society. From there I went to Columbia University in NY where I took a Ph. D. in 1974. That’s a long time in between, but there was a war going on then and I felt the time was better spent elsewhere. During graduate school I spent summers working for various government agencies (Peace Corps, USIA, USAID) and almost went into government service but got into international finance instead. While at Columbia I was in the International Fellows Program, an interdisciplinary program that mixed graduate students in all disciplines.

My 35 year career in international banking and leasing has been spent with companies like Chemical Bank (now JP Morgan Chase), a Finnish bank called Kansallis (now merged and disappeared), Bank Brussels Lambert (now part of Banque Nationale De Paris), Fleet Bank of Boston (long since merged and disappeared, probably into Bank of America), AT&T Capital Corporation (long ago bought and sold), and De Lage Landen Financial Services. I currently work for Korea Development Bank, New York Branch, where I specialize in Credit Advisory work.

Highlights of my work included introducing DLL, a Dutch leasing company part of Rabobank, into the U.S. and helping merge the NY office into Tokai Leasing (purchased from a Japanese bank) located in the Philadelphia area. Career specialties include project finance, leverage buyout financing, ship finance, synthetic leasing, and other varieties of wholesale banking (not to be confused with the ripoff artistry of investment banking and hedge funds).

As I look back on life I think my accomplishments include (1) getting a good education and avoiding military service; (2) traveling the world for both business and pleasure; (3) having a rewarding career that tracked my interests in economics and international business; and (4) seeing my two sons grow up to be successful in what they like to do (jazz alto saxophone artist; Assistant Principal of a startup math & science high school).

If you like interesting music and go for modern jazz, see my son, Loren’s, website where you can play clips from his recordings. It’s at www.lorenstillman.com.