Page 17 - Priorities #61 2015-April/May
P. 17
17
Government (and Legal Studies) and Psychology. Later, he became more interested in finance, and went to work for Rolm Corporation, a Silicon Valley technology company, as a financial analyst in the 1980s.
“It was the Google of its day,” he says. “Rolm grew from being a startup to a fortune 500 company in seven years. We worked in a campus in Santa Clara that was the equivalent of the Googleplex. We had an athletic center, swimming pools, basketball courts–it was an amazing place to work.”
Andy later moved into the field of investment management, and in 1997, he and his wife, Leslie Tang Schilling, founded Union Square Investments, an SEC registered investment advisor firm that works with ultra- high net worth families on a wide range of investment strategies and management. (Currently, he is the chairman and she is the director of the company.)
But though Andy’s career moved forward at a rapid clip, he never lost contact with Priory. In the late ‘90s, the school was looking for its first alumni rep on the board of trustees, and Andy stepped up to the plate. He took a seat on the Executive Committee and also became chair of the Finance and Investment Committee, advising on the financial health and performance of the school as a whole. During that time, his oldest daughter, Alec, started attending Priory. His two other daughters, Lauren and Elizabeth, soon followed suit. Today, Alec, 25, is working for a startup skin care company in San Francisco; Lauren, 23, is working in Washington, DC, for the nonprofit Conservation International and preparing to go to the Peace Corp; and Elizabeth, 18, is getting ready to graduate from Priory and head off to her dad’s alma mater, Bowdoin College.
In addition to serving on the board, Andy, along with his wife Leslie, have frequently contributed to Priory’s evolution through donations made to the school. Andy says he made his first donation to Priory upon his high school graduation as a way of saying thank you for all the time the school had invested in him. Today, he and Leslie, continue to give because they believe so strongly in Priory’s mission—and in education, in general.
“My family is very passionate about education,” says Leslie, who, in addition to being director of Union Square Investments, is also director of the Asian Art Museum, and has served in the past as director of KQED, Inc. and Golden West Financial Corporation. “My family came from China. My grandfather lost everything twice – first to the Japanese and then to the communist revolution. He had studied chemical engineering at MIT, and always credited a good education to his ability to start all over again and be successful.”
The Schilling family circa 1978 : Robert, Barbara, Mike and Andy.
Alec, '08, Elizabeth, '15, Lauren, '10

