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John Montgomery to Speak about Business and Philanthropy at W&L

John Montgomery, founder and CEO of Bridgeway Capital Management, Inc., will present an address at Washington and Lee University on Thursday, March 19, at 7 p.m. in Northen Auditorium in the Leyburn Library.

The title of the talk is “A Unique Model of Business and Philanthropy: Is it your work life or your Life’s Work?” It is free and open to the public.

Montgomery worked with computer modeling and quantitative methods as a research engineer at MIT in the late 1970s and later, while working towards his M.B.A. at Harvard, Montgomery investigated methods to apply modeling to portfolio management. This investment style proved more successful than he had expected.

Montgomery left his position in the transportation industry at the end of 1991 to perform full-time research on his investment models, study the mutual fund industry and write a business plan for Bridgeway – devising a business model that included a philanthropic component. All the partners agree that every year the company will give half of its profits to philanthropic investments. He will talk about this during his speech at W&L.

“Bridgeway Foundation is an outlet through which, along with others associated with Bridgeway, I carry out some of my most important life goals,” said Montgomery. “These include giving back to our community and world (part of the “bridge” in Bridgeway), investing in future generations and building on the fragile efforts of others for reconciliation, human rights and fighting genocide. Moving from dream to reality is never easy, but by working together it becomes not only excitingly possible.”
Bridgeway’s philanthropic investments include poverty studies in higher education. They have made contributions to the intern program of Shepherd and to three schools starting poverty studies: Baylor University, Rice University and Furman University.

He earned his B.A. from Swarthmore and graduate degrees from M.I.T. and Harvard Business School.

Montgomery’s talk is sponsored by the Shepherd Program, the department of business administration, Leadership Development, Religious Life and the Howerton Fund.