Meet a Colleague: Steve McAllister Steve McAllister serves as vice president for finance and treasurer.

W&L News Office
October 28, 2026

Q. How long have you worked at W&L?
I am in my 34th blissful year, which means way too long relative to the betterment of the institution.

Q. What is the favorite aspect of your job at W&L? 
No day is ever the same. It is rare when my day goes according to plan. There is almost always something out of left field that changes what I get to work on.

Q. If you chose a different path, what other career would you have? 
I have always said that in retirement I want to go work at a resort three days a week and simply serve drinks at the poolside bar. The opportunity to fulfill that dream is getting close.

Q. Where did you grow up? 
Who said I ever grew up! I’ll say that my formative years were in Roanoke, Virginia.

Q. What was your favorite subject in school?
Arithmetic (as opposed to mathematics). I advanced to calculus and while I could do it, I couldn’t begin to understand or explain the concepts. As my seventh grade math teacher once advised, sometimes you just have to memorize the formulas and forget about trying to understand it. That was great advice once I hit calculus.

Q. What three words describe you best?  
I think the better question would be what are the three names that I am typically called. But I don’t think that you can print those in this forum.

Q. Name one person from history you would like to spend a day with and why.
Doug Kenney — the person who was the creative force behind National Lampoon. What an absolute genius. Anyone who could come up with “What the hell are we supposed to do, ya moron?” and “this requires an act of a futile and stupid gesture” is pure brilliance.

Q. Who is the most famous person you have met and where did you meet them?
Jim Boeheim, former coach for Syracuse basketball. He and his family were on the same flight as me and my wife, Katie. It was very apparent that the last place he wanted to be was with his family and there was no way I was going to ask him for an autograph.

Q. What do you like to do away from work? 
I am a deep, deep introvert, so when not working, I value my time alone – there is not a need to always feel like you have to do something.

Q. What is your least favorite chore at home?  
It’s a tie between vacuuming, emptying the dishwasher, changing the sheets and putting away the laundry. In essence, if it is a chore inside the house, I hate it.

Q. What is your favorite family holiday tradition? 
I am not much of a traditions person, so I don’t think I can call out an actual tradition. However, even as a kid, I hated Halloween. I was so happy when Katie finally said that we did not have to turn on a light or hand out candy. That’s a tradition I can get behind.

Q. What is the most adventurous thing that you have ever done?  
I’m not certain that it would be viewed as necessarily adventurous, but when I first met Katie, she invited me to a party at her college. I had never been to Randolph-Macon Woman’s College, and didn’t have a clue where it was in Lynchburg, but I found my way there, and we have been together ever since (that was 41 years ago). By the way, there was no party which proves you can have a successful relationship even if it was built on a foundation of lies and deceit.

Q. What do you pretend to hate but secretly love? 
Deadlines — I am a procrastinator at heart, and there is nothing quite like a true, hard deadline to force me to get a task done.

Q. What is your all-time favorite food or food dish?  
I love to cook (but not bake), so this is a hard one. I’m always happy to try a new recipe, but if forced to choose, I have a lasagna recipe by a celebrity chef who was appropriately called out by the “Me Too” movement, but it is by far the best lasagna recipe I have come across. All I have to say is “I’m thinking lasagna,” and the family says yes. I do feel bad though about using Lasagna as the answer, given that Colin Reid referenced it in his profile recently.

Q. What is the last book you read? 
It is a big assumption to believe that I can read. Quite honestly, I don’t have the attention span to read books anymore. I am purely a reader of articles at this point in my life. If it can’t be read in 15 minutes or less, then its not going to happen. On second thought, I did read “Caps for Sale” to my granddaughter recently. It’s a book, not necessarily complicated, but a book nevertheless.

Q. If you could choose one series to binge-watch, what would it be? 
“Curb Your Enthusiasm.”  I relate well to Larry David. Both quite superficial and completely flummoxed by others.

Q. What is your all-time favorite movie? 
It’s a tie between “Animal House” (see aforementioned reference to Doug Kenney) and “Super Bad.” Neither could be made today. Among contemporary movies, I loved “Oh Hi!” — great premise and execution. Plus Molly Gordon was fabulous in it.

Q. What song or artist could you play on repeat? 
Katie would tell you Wilco/Jeff Tweedy, but the playlist is far more varied with the Decemberists, REM, Talking Heads/David Byrne, Tom Petty, Cage the Elephant, (and others) probably in that order. Okay, so not that varied after all. As David Saacke would say, you really are a late middle-aged white guy.

Q. Tell us something most people don’t know about you.
The first time I took the Myers-Briggs survey, the facilitator looked at my scores and said, “how did you actually make it through college?” I often wonder about that myself, but I did finish — truly.

Q. Anything else you’d like to share? 
It is no secret, that I will retire in June 2027, so I think the question of what is the one thing you will not miss about your work would be a good question. The answer would be, I will be happy to never write another tuition letter. I feel sorry for parents who have had multiple children at the university. I can only imagine for some, they get the letter and say something like, “Oh look, he just recycled 2017’s letter.”