Kourtney Gibson is an American entrepreneur and president of Loop Capital, a private investment banking firm. Gibson is also a member of the Board of Directors of Lululemon Athletica and MarketAxess, and the Board of Trustees of the University of Miami.
Gibson was born on July 5, 1981, at St. Luke’s Memorial Hospital in Racine, Wisconsin. She attended J.I. Case High School in Racine, where she was an outstanding student and captain of the cheerleading team. She turned down scholarships from the University of Wisconsin and other universities to attend the University of Miami in Florida. She earned an MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management and a BBA from the University of Miami. Gibson originally wanted to become a bilingual pediatrician but decided to pursue business while studying at the University of Miami.
Gibson started as an intern at Loop Capital in 1997, the year the company was founded. She later held various leadership positions at the firm, including Head of Global Equities. In 2015, Crain’s Chicago Business named Gibson to its 40 Under 40 list. In 2016, she was elected President of Loop Capital, succeeding the firm’s co-founder Albert R. Grace, Jr.
In November 2020, Lululemon added Gibson to the company’s board of directors. That same year, Gibson joined the board of financial services company MarketAxess. In 2021, she partnered with Google and Goldman Sachs to promote racial equality. The partnership between Loop Capital and Google was part of Goldman Sachs’ One Million Black Women initiative, which aims to reduce the racial wealth gap.
She is frequently featured as an expert on finance and cryptocurrencies in publications such as Crain’s Chicago Business and Markets Insider. Gibson is a regular contributor to CNBC. She spoke at the 2021 Women in Leadership Symposium at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Gibson is also a member of the Economic Club of Chicago and the Treasury Market Practises Group sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. She is a member of the University of Miami Board of Trustees and serves on the University’s Executive Committee and Investment Committee. She is a member of the Viterbo University Finance Committee.
In 2013, she established the Kourtney K. Ratliff Endowed Scholarship Fund at the University of Miami. The fund sponsors the Kourtney K. Ratliff Scholarship for Academic Excellence, which is awarded to African American students from the Midwest pursuing a business degree. In 2017, Gibson donated the Nola Starling Recital Hall to Viterbo University in LaCrosse, Wisconsin,, named after Gibson’s mother, a Viterbo University graduate. Gibson is chairman of the board of the Chicago Scholars Foundation and a board member of the Dibia Dream Foundation.
Gibson is married and has four children. She currently resides with her family in Atlanta, Georgia and Chicago, Illinois.
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Barton Kelsie, “From Intern to President: How Kourtney Gibson Does it All”, atlantamagazine.com, April 15, 2021 https://atlantanmagazine.com/from-intern-to-president-kourtney-gibson
University of Wisconsin-Madison, “2021 Women in Leadership Symposium presents Onward & Upward: The Era of the Empowered Woman”, diversity.wisc.edu , https://diversity.wisc.edu/2021/03/2021-women-in-leadership-symposium-presents-onward-upward-the-era-of-the-empowered-woman/
Fox Michelle, “Black leaders share their advice on how to help Black Americans succeed”, cnbc.com, February 16, 2021 https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/16/black-leaders-share-advice-on-how-to-help-black-americans-succeed.html