Opportunity, Front and Center

While Todd Halbrook was working as a managing director at Wells Fargo Private Client Group in Newport Beach in 2010, one of his co-workers sought out the 2005 alum of the Fully Employed MBA program at The Paul Merage School of Business for advice. “I told her, ‘If you want to stay in Orange County, UCI is the only business school you want to go to. Don’t apply anywhere else,’” he says.

The co-worker committed not only to the Merage School FEMBA program but to him: Todd and Lisa Halbrook ’08, FEMBA ’14, started dating soon after and married in 2014. Their pride in and gratitude for UC Irvine’s business school has only grown over the years, as he has built a successful career as an O.C. investment and wealth management advisor and certified financial planner.

In May 2023, the couple pledged $5 million to the Merage School’s Center for Investment and Wealth Management. Since 2005, the center has been transforming the lives of underrepresented high school students in Orange County through innovative financial literacy programs and introducing new generations of Anteaters to the financial management profession.

Through the renamed Todd and Lisa Halbrook Center for Investment and Wealth Management, the couple is not only giving back to their alma mater but also making a meaningful impact on the lives of students in the UC Irvine community.

“My career has been so good to us,” Todd Halbrook says. “Few business schools have a program focused on investment and wealth management. We wanted to support this center where students can have the resources to pursue a career in my field.”

It was an arduous journey from his hardscrabble upbringing to making the largest gift ever by an alum to The Paul Merage School of Business. A first-generation college student, Todd Halbrook grew up in a single-parent household in Tenafly, New Jersey, and worked his way through his undergraduate degree in management at Pepperdine University. “I was going to school full time, interning 30 hours a week at Smith Barney and working another 30-hour-a-week job to pay for school, rent and my car,” he says. “It was very difficult for me to complete my degree.”

Lisa Halbrook, too, was a first- generation college student, the daughter of Vietnamese immigrants in West Covina. Her undergraduate experience at UC Irvine, where she studied economics, broadened her horizons. “You learn how to be self-sufficient, try different classes and meet new friends, whom I’m still close with today,” she says.

After her path intersected with Todd Halbrook’s at Wells Fargo and she enrolled in the Merage School FEMBA program, Lisa Halbrook discovered that he had not oversold its caliber or instructors. “The ability to get real-life advice from someone who has already been through what you’re experiencing was very valuable to me,” she says.

Todd Halbrook’s 30-year career in investment and wealth management has progressed through four companies; he has been a managing director at RBC Wealth Management since April 2023. The common thread throughout has been his talent for helping clients solve their financial issues in a thoughtful, logical manner.

“The first hat I wear is investment advisor, but the second one is psychologist,” he explains. “We walk through their different financial issues together – whether it’s buying a home, selling a business, funding a child’s education – and figure out solutions. Investing can be very emotional, but I’m very logical and methodical in what I do, and I think that has served me well.”

“The program really does make a difference in terms of how students manage money, the stress they feel about money and other impactful factors.”

Christopher Schwarz, director of the Todd and Lisa Halbrook Center for Investment and Wealth Management

The Halbrooks made their first gift to the Merage School in 2019, with the Todd and Lisa Halbrook Endowed Scholarship. “It was important to us that our scholarship is needs-based, for students from challenging circumstances who need help,” Todd Halbrook says.

The couple have also invested their time in the school. They have hosted several alumni and faculty events at their home in Irvine. Todd Halbrook has talked about his profession for the Merage School Future Leaders Initiative, which equips underserved Southern California pre-college students with business education, financial literacy and career preparation skills. He has served on the board of the Center for Investment and Wealth Management since 2017 as well as on the dean’s advisory board. “I really like the direction that Dean Ian O. Williamson and Christopher Schwarz, the center’s director, are taking the school,” Todd Halbrook says. “They were pivotal in our decision to make our gift.”

He says it was important that the center be named for both him and Lisa, who left the workforce in order to raise their son, Alex, 9: “Everything I’ve done, all of my success, I couldn’t have achieved without Lisa and her support.”

The Halbrooks’ $5 million gift “is transformational,” Schwarz says. “It provides long-term viability for the center. It provides more resources to achieve our mission, which is financial literacy in the community.”

Over the past decade, the center has touched more than 50,000 lives through its spectrum of financial literacy programs. The Pacific Life LIFEvest Financial Literacy Residential Program “is our largest program in terms of impact,” Schwarz says. It aims to empower early high school students who would be among the first in their families to complete college with essential financial literacy and life skills. Of the 2,000 participants, more than 85 percent have gone on to postsecondary education, two to three times the baseline.

“The Halbrooks’ gift will continue to allow us to expand our offerings to at-risk high school and UC Irvine students,” Schwarz says.

The center also offers Personal FinANTs, a free resource to boost the financial literacy of Anteaters. For the tens of thousands of UC Irvine students who have participated, “the program really does make a difference in terms of how students manage money, the stress they feel about money and other impactful factors,” Schwarz says.

To further professional development, the center is working on restructuring the Merage School’s curriculum so that students can earn their certified financial planner designation, a priority for Todd Halbrook.

“There’s a tremendous amount of wealth management here in Orange County,” Schwarz says. “The ability to sit for the CFP exam will give our students an advantage in this employment market.” He adds: “Todd and Lisa are very focused on supporting our undergraduate students here at UCI. Their gift speaks to their generosity and their passion for the center.”