Theresa Havell

Theresa Ann Havell died on September 1 at her home in Manhattan. She was a pioneer for women in the financial industry, a concert-level pianist fluent in five languages, a leader in fighting domestic violence and a wise counsellor to numerous organizations. Theresa was born September 17, 1946 in Buffalo, New York, the daughter of Dr. Richard McNerney and Mary Quill McNerney. She studied at the Pensionnat de St. Namur in Namur, Belgium, graduated from Manhattanville College with a B.A. in Russian Studies and received an M.A. from New York University in Slavic Languages and Literature. In 1970, when financial service firms began to open training programs broadly to women, she joined Citibank, where she became Vice President and Treasurer for six Latin American and Caribbean branches, headquartered in Caracas, Venezuela. She moved to Lehman Brothers in 1979 as founder of the Liquidity Management Group, working largely with national central banks, in the Lehman Asset Management Group, and then to Neuberger Berman in 1984 as partner and a member of the firm’s Executive Committee and founder and head of the Fixed Income Management Group. In 1999 Theresa founded her own firm, Havell Capital Management, specializing in fixed income management, of which she was President. She was a leader of Sanctuary for Families, serving first as Board Financial Officer and then as Chair of the Board; Horace Mann School, where she was a member of the Board of Trustees for 16 years and Chair of its Investment Committee; Akilah Institute for Women, a school for women in Rwanda, as a founding Member of the Board and its Executive Committee; the New York Academy of Medicine, which she served as a Board member and Chair of the Investment and Finance Committee; and Volt Information Sciences, where she served as a Board member for 12 years. Theresa was an active member of the Council on Foreign Relations, where she met her husband James H. Carter, who survives her, as do her six children, Dan, Olympia (John Startin), Chloe, Clarissa, Tristan and Georgina (Nicholas Clarke) McNerney; three step-children, Janet (Philip Benedetti), Faith (Stephen Caton) and Katherine (Anthony Wynne) Carter; her sister, Miriam Hellman; two grandchildren and five step-grandchildren. Theresa was brave, candid, insightful, brilliant, fun, adventurous, humble, generous and beautiful. She was exceptional in every way, a role model for how to live life fully and selflessly, with passion and aplomb. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made in her memory to Sanctuary for Families.