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Business & Tech

Nancy Bronstein Kaplan's Two Loves: Family and Finances

Checking in with New Trier alumni before the 40th year reunion in September.

Nancy Bronstein Kaplan has not followed the typical road of a New Trier West grad, especially after finishing college. For one thing, Nancy had her first child not long after graduation. Equally important, Nancy loved the challenge of the financial world. Along the way, Nancy had her share of uncertainty about the future, went through a divorce, and faced the barriers of a male-dominated profession.

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But it certainly worked out.

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Nancy has been married to her second husband for 26 years, has two grown children and two grandchildren, has lived in the same house in Glencoe since 1985, and loves working in futures at the Stock Exchange in downtown Chicago.

“On the personal side, both my kids live here, so I’m pretty lucky,” Nancy said. “You know how it is, when everything is fine, you kind of hold your breath.”

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Nancy said she knew the general direction her professional life would take as early as her New Trier days. “I worked at the Board of Trade one summer in high school and a couple summers in college,” she said. “I always liked math, working with numbers, something where there is a definite answer. If it is an answer that’s a number, it is not theory, it is not debatable, it is either right or wrong.”

As for being in the vanguard for the female invasion of a field which was populated and controlled by men, Nancy had given it considerable thought. “My view of the different roles men and women had [during] our parents’ generation, I thought what women did was boring,” she said. “I thought what men did seemed  much more interesting. It kind of directed me to what, at the time, was a male-dominated part of the world. Even today, it seems like men and women choose different things to focus on in the business world.”

Nancy’s career began with a move to northern Virginia where she worked for Mobil Oil. But after five years of spending all of her vacations heading back home to visit her family, Nancy was ready to move to Chicago.

“I was divorced and a single parent,” Nancy said. “I came back to Chicago and traded on the trading floor for about five years. I left the floor, in large part, because it was physically demanding. You had to be big and loud. I’m louder than I am big.”

Looking at the future, Nancy’s plans are pretty basic. “I really consider myself pretty lucky because I don’t feel that there’s that much to do that I haven’t done.  I’m not planning to move anywhere because my children and grandchildren are here. My parents were a tremendous support for us with my kids. I feel like I would like to do the same thing.”

Nancy is still happy with her career.

“I really like working. I work a lot. At some point I would like to work less but I don’t really think about retiring except when my husband wants me to think about it.”

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