Comfortable in the fast-paced world of a Wall Street portfolio manager, Elizabeth Gregg GRD ’77 was also a caring, soft-spoken member of her Brooklyn community.
“She was one of those people who had no idea what she meant to other people,” Melissa Gallagher, a classmate and close friend of Gregg’s from Mount Holyoke, said in 2001. “She made sure the neighborhood retained the qualities it had. She was really helpful and self-effacing to a fault.”
After graduating from Mount Holyoke College in 1971, Gregg immediately entered graduate school at Yale and spent six years earning a Ph.D. in medieval studies, focusing on fifteenth century French defense spending.
After Yale, Gregg earned an M.B.A. at New York University and went on to work as a portfolio manager at Alger Management, spending 18 years at the firm.
“In all the craziness of the go-go stock market, she was very disciplined in her approach,” Alger CEO Dan Chung said in 2001. “She never wavered in trying to understand who her clients were.”
Outside the office, Gregg’s hobbies included tending to her garden, taking care of her cats and renovating her 150-year-old brownstone apartment.
Gallagher said Gregg loved to make grape pies and preserves from the arbor in her back yard and give them to others in her neighborhood. She also supported her community when serious issues arose: when Mayor Rudolph Giuliani tried to get Gregg’s city council member to retire, Gregg formed a coalition in her neighborhood to support the public official.
Ten years after 9/11, Gregg’s family has continued her tradition of quiet yet unwavering community involvement.
According to her brother Charles Gregg, while the Gregg family has not created any charities or organizations in his sister’s name, they make sure to send a check to the Red Cross every year.
“It’s more out of gratitude than memorial,” he explained. “At the time, some representatives of our family went to New York. It was pretty chaotic, but [the Red Cross] had a help desk for families who were trying to find their relatives. They were very helpful, and we’re still grateful today.”