When Nancy “Nana” Lampton ’64 left the University of Virginia with an M.A. but not a Ph.D. in English literature, she returned to her hometown, Louisville, Ky.
“I came back and felt quite depressed and started going to the office, as I had since I was 16,” she says, noting it’s now her 59th year looking out over the Ohio River from that office. For the first 35 or so, she worked alongside her “very tough” father in the insurance company founded by his father.
Eventually, her brothers left to pursue their own paths, while Nana remained steadfast and guided the company forward in her own way while honoring her grandfather and father. From early on, she had the title chairman and CEO (“in case Father died,” she says). She was invited to be a board member of Liberty Bank, which eventually became part of JP Morgan. Not long after that, she became a member of other corporate boards. It wasn’t because she had money, she says; at the time, she didn’t.
“That line of Wellesley College on the résumé really meant a lot to these companies,” she says, “I was very proud of that.”
The College taught her important life lessons, she says.
“It gave me the courage to overcome things that seemed so difficult you couldn’t do them,” she says, then suggests that “persistence” is an even better word. “Because you can’t always get it all done at once.”
Nana delved into land conservation during her tenure on the board of National Parks Conservation Association. When her long-term investments accumulated, she wanted to conserve and to serve others, so she created The Snowy Owl Foundation (snowyowlfoundation.org). Through modest grants given in four categories—land, art, education, and human need—the foundation “helps organizations that really need it,” she says.
She entered the business world at a time, she notes, when “women were not very accepted.” But Wellesley prepared her for that, too.
“It taught me humility, because I never could be at the top of the school or have the best grades,” she says. “I just thought, ‘Let me have some of it.’ And some is enough. You can’t be greedy for it.”
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