Despite the many rewards of working in finance for decades on Wall Street and in London, John Caccavale (T'81) still considers his undergraduate experience at Duke among the best times of his life.
"It was spectacular," says Caccavale, who proudly notes he never missed a men's home basketball game. "I could not imagine a better four years.
"If it wasn't for my start at Duke, I would never have had all of the great things that have happened to me in life, and I want to pay that all back."
Duke has welcomed that offer, hiring Caccavale to be the new executive director of the university's Financial Economics center.
The center is designed to be a conduit between Duke liberal art students, the world of financial practitioners and economic researchers. While the center is based within the Department of Economics, it will work with students from all majors, and is built on three main pillars: research, teaching, and student programs/engagement.
Historically, Wall Street has hired Duke students because of their liberal arts skills, but as Wall Street becomes more technical and more competitive, Duke students need more financial savvy, Caccavale says.
That's where the Duke Financial Economics center plays a significant role. The center enables students to connect with alumni, program sponsors and faculty.
But the center is about much more than banking, according to Caccavale.
"We're expanding the definition of finance at Duke well beyond Wall Street," he says. "There are people working in finance at all major companies, from Google to government, and there is a need for financially literate employees.
"I would love to have public policy majors, who are going to work for NGOs or the government, understand the finance and business implications of policy. And it would be great if all of the lawyers who become politicians had a greater insight into how finance really works."
The Road Back to Duke
At Duke, Caccavale was a double major in economics and management science (a major available in the days before The Fuqua School of Business existed). After graduating in 1981, the Long Island, N.Y., native took that knowledge directly to Wall Street.
Caccavale started his career working for JP Morgan's foreign exchange trading desk in New York during the day; he attended New York University-Stern for his MBA at night.
He soon began recruiting Duke students to work at JP Morgan as employees and interns. Many of those Duke recruits have become good friends and colleagues. "I could see from the other side the difference Duke students can make," he says. "The intelligence, drive, and camaraderie I found on Wall Street are still present in Duke Students today."
In 1992, Caccavale moved from New York to London where he led JP Morgan's foreign exchange trading desks. While Caccavale and his family say they loved living and working in London, he kept looking for ways to change his career track within the world of finance. After three years he returned to New York to continue his work for JP Morgan as a managing director and head of North American foreign exchange sales, trading and research.
And there were more changes to come -- some by his choice, and some because of the volatile repercussions of the mergers between financial corporations.
Soon after JP Morgan was acquired by Chase, Caccavale left the company after 20 years. He spent a short time at Lehman Brothers before moving to Barclays Capital to run the foreign exchange trading desk. After five years, Caccavale seized the challenge to build and run the North American BARX Electronic Trading sales team. Even with this latest step in a successful career, though, Caccavale says he was looking for his next opportunity -- and for a higher level of engagement with Duke.
While at Barclays, Caccavale started working with Duke professor Emma Rasiel in her Financial Education Partnership, a program that helps Duke students who are interested in working in the financial world. This program allows students to learn the skills and understand the scope of the financial world in practical ways. "You can't play pro basketball just by reading the rulebook, you have to practice playing the game too," Caccavale says.
The more he got involved with the partnership, the more excited he became about the program's potential. It became clear to Caccavale that this would be his next career challenge.
"I decided when I was 40 that I would change my career at 50," Caccavale says. "You need 10 to 15 years to make a second career work, and the timing worked out perfectly for me and my family: two of my kids were in college and my oldest had already graduated."
It was at that juncture in his life, with the support of his wife, Ruth, that Caccavale seized the opportunity to become more involved with Duke by bringing his knowledge of finance to academia. In the summer of 2010 he left Wall Street and moved back to Durham to become the executive director of Duke's Financial Economics center.
For this devoted Blue Devil, making the switch was completely logical.
"Non-Dukies ask why I did it," he says, "but Dukies ask, ‘How did you do it?' and ‘How can I do it?'"