$25 million latest gift from Justin and Victoria Gmelich brings their giving to school to over $28 million
Some of the most lasting gifts start with one small moment.
For Justin Gmelich, it happened at Villanova, where a conversation with a faculty member helped shape the rest of his life.
More than three decades later, he and his wife, Victoria, are making sure that kind of moment keeps happening for other students.
The couple has given $25 million to Espiritus Nova: The Campaign for Villanova University.
It is one of the defining gifts of the most ambitious fundraising effort in the university’s history.
“During my time as a Villanova student, a moment with a faculty member had a lasting impact on me and in charting my future,” Justin said.
“That moment demonstrated to me how critical classroom opportunities are to student success, and it’s one of the many reasons Victoria and I are so committed to supporting educational opportunities at the university.”
The gift supports two things the couple cares about. The first is the Victoria and Justin Gmelich Lab for Financial Markets in the Villanova School of Business.
They created it with a $3 million commitment, one of the largest named gifts for a financial markets lab in the country.
The lab is a bright, glass-walled space modeled on a Wall Street trading floor.
Students work on high-powered computers with Bloomberg terminals and other professional databases.
For two former bond traders, it was a natural choice.
They had seen firsthand how much technology shapes the markets, and they wanted Villanova students to arrive on the job fluent in it.
The new gift gives the lab fresh resources to keep growing.
The second is a project with historic weight.
The gift names the Gmelich Family Gallery in Vic Maggitti Hall, Villanova’s new library at the heart of campus.
The gallery will hold landmark documents from the Civil Rights Movement, including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s original typewritten “I Have a Dream” speech.
Villanova legend George Raveling chose the university as the speech’s steward, and the Gmelichs helped bring it there while Justin was chair of the Board of Trustees.
Now the family’s name will sit beside one of America’s most treasured documents, where students can see it for generations.
“For more than three decades, Victoria and Justin have been incredibly generous and loyal members of the Villanova community,” said the Rev. Peter M. Donohue, OSA, Villanova’s president, “but even more so for the faith they continue to place in Villanova, our mission and our students.”
Justin graduated from the business school in 1990 and built a remarkable career in finance: Salomon Brothers, then senior leadership at Goldman Sachs, then King Street Capital, and now co-chief investment officer at Millennium Management.
He has chaired Villanova’s Board of Trustees and its Investment Committee, received the Bartley Medallion, the business school’s highest alumni honor, and now co-chairs the $1.25 billion campaign.
Victoria’s story is just as impressive.
She was a Dartmouth swimmer, earned an MBA from Columbia, and traded mortgage derivatives on Wall Street before stepping away to raise the couple’s six children.
When she saw that her daughters’ corner of New Jersey had an all-boys Catholic high school but no school for girls, she co-founded one.
Trinity Hall, an all-girls college-prep school in Tinton Falls, now educates hundreds of young women, and the Gmelichs are its main benefactors.
The school’s Gmelich Hall carries their name.
Their giving reaches well beyond Villanova.
At Dartmouth, they endowed a professorship in cancer immunotherapy and a permanent fund for swimming and diving.
Closer to home, the Edward Hall Gmelich Scholarship Fund honors their son Teddy.
Counting only the gifts made public, the Gmelichs have now given at least $28 million to Villanova.
Their full giving, to Villanova, Dartmouth, Trinity Hall and beyond, is considerably larger.