FACULTY FEATURE
BEARS, BULLS AND JR. BILLS Rob Hill Brings Valuable Experience in Finance to the Classroom
From Saudi Arabia and Princeton, to the New York Stock Exchange and CSP Masters swimming, AP Economics teacher and JV swim coach Rob Hill ruminates on how he landed at SLUH. It’s a new career for this finance expert, and he’s already making an impact. You lived in many interesting places growing up, including Saudi Arabia. How has that influenced you? Living in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was a great learning experience. Aside from having to learn and respect the Saudi Arabian culture, I was exposed to the Muslim religion. Also, while living in Saudi Arabia, my family and I visited Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain, Italy and Malaysia. I spent my 9th grade in Saudi Arabia, and then for 10th-12th grades, I attended a private coeducational boarding high school in Andover, Ma. (Phillips Academy) graduating in 1991. My perspective of the world grew exponentially during these formative years.
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You worked through the 2001 dot-com bubble at NBCi and through the banking crisis of 2008 at Thompson Street Capital Partners. What have those experiences taught you? The economy can be very fickle. Capitalism has so many attractive qualities, but a true negative was the hubris some people and institutions had in how they conducted business. Conducting business in a moral or ethical fashion can become a slippery slope when there are many legal loopholes, such as rating agency failures, research analyst kickbacks, dishonest subprime mortgage brokers and malicious greed. It seemed appropriate economic and regulatory structures were just not effective enough to keep our economy from tanking during those years.
