Louis A. Simpson ’58 (’96 P)

Investment advisor and Fortune 500 CEO

Louis A. Simpson is chairman of SQ Advisors, LLC, a registered investment advisor started in 2011 based in Naples, Florida. He was elected president and CEO, capital operations, of GEICO Corporation in 1993 and retired in 2010. From 1985 to 1993, he served as vice chairman of the board. Simpson joined the company in 1979 as senior vice president and chief investment officer.

Prior to joining GEICO, Simpson was president and chief executive officer of Western Asset Management, a subsidiary of the Los Angeles-based Western Bancorporation. Earlier in his career, Simpson was a partner at Stein Roe & Farnham, a Chicago investment firm, and also was an instructor of economics at Princeton University.

Simpson is lead director of Verisign and was named an outstanding director by the Outstanding Directors Exchange in 2006.

He is a life trustee of Northwestern and was named a senior fellow and an adjunct professor of finance at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management in 2016. He also is a trustee emeritus for the Urban Institute and the Museum of Science and Industry and a former director of the Economic Club of Chicago. He and his spouse, Kimberly K. Querrey, were honored with the 2018 Joseph Cardinal Bernardin Humanitarian Award. Querrey joined the Northwestern Board of Trustees in 2016.

Simpson has three children: Ted ’96 MBA, Kenneth, and Irving.

Simpson began his college career at Northwestern and earned a bachelor’s degree from Ohio Wesleyan University, where he also received an honorary doctor of laws degree in 2013. He received a Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship followed by a master’s degree in economics from Princeton University.