Gratefully Invested

Trevor Shaner ’92 has enjoyed a prosperous career in the financial services industry with UBS (Union Bank of Switzerland), formerly PaineWebber & Co., one of the largest wealth and asset management firms in the world. Having held a variety of senior leadership roles, he currently serves as managing director in UBS’ West Des Moines office. Sharing his success with Simpson is one of the most important fruits of his labor.

Growing up in the small town of Pocahontas, Iowa, Shaner followed his father’s footsteps to Simpson, mainly, he says, because “I was the orneriest of five boys and my dad knew that Simpson could kind of track me in.”

His dad was right. Shaner admits getting off to a bit of a slow start at Simpson, but he was fortunate to have two great mentors quickly intervene and help him get rolling the right way. Hall-of-Fame Track & Field coach, the late Keith Ellingson, and longtime economics professor Frank Colella, who passed away in May 2024, were not about to let Shaner squander his Simpson opportunity.

“They took it upon themselves to sit me down and say, ‘Listen, son, we’ve got to get you refocused, if you want to do what you said you were going to do.’”

Finding His Way

Shaner took their counsel to heart, employing an altered academic plan to get on track. As fate would have it, one of the classes he took as part of that plan was ECON 338 – the Eberhart Student Aid Fund (ESAF). The unique offering gave Shaner and his classmates the opportunity to gain real-world investment experience by managing a sub-portfolio of the College’s endowment. At the time, the portfolio was worth about $100,000.

“It was real money that students got to make recommendations about and actually manage investments through individual stock purchases,” said Shaner. “I think what shocked me at the time is that it was such a large pool of money they were willing to entrust to kids. It got my attention, and I enjoyed it — enough so that I was involved in working with the ESAF project every semester from that point until I graduated.”

During that time, Shaner made the first of what would prove to be many Simpson connections at PaineWebber, now UBS, when Professor Colella called on Simpson trustee and UBS Senior Vice President Jymm Oplt ’72 to explore opportunities for Shaner.

Oplt and his UBS colleague, Jim Spooner ’82, hired Shaner as an intern between his junior and senior year. He wound up securing a full-time position as a financial advisor there right out of college and he’s been with the firm for nearly 33 years. The trio formed their current UBS management group in 2010 and the firm has continued to open doors for Simpson student interns and full-time professionals over the last 20 years.