Katherine B. Magrath, a University trustee and alumna, died Friday, Sept. 23, 2005, in Naples, Fla., after a long battle with breast cancer. She was 64.
“Katherine was truly an exceptional woman, so loving and warm and, at the same time, highly talented and successful and one of Washington University’s most outstanding alums,” said Harriet K. Switzer, Ph.D., secretary to the Board of Trustees.
“Her strength and courage throughout her long illness was truly admirable.”
Magrath was born in 1941 in Rockford, Ill. She graduated from Stillman Valley High School in 1959 and earned an undergraduate business degree from WUSTL in 1963.
In 1975, she was selected as a Sloan Fellow by Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she earned a master’s degree.
She entered the field of financial asset management and became the first female investment manager of a major mutual fund, Keystone’s “K2” fund. She later became the director of equity investment at the Ford Foundation, holding direct responsibility for all of that institution’s global equity assets.
With three other partners in 1982, she founded ValueQuest Ltd. to provide global equity asset management for large institutions. The company’s clients included Boeing, 3M and Xerox, along with several major educational, governmental and foreign institutions.
She was elected to the University’s Board of Trustees on May 3, 1996, and served until her death.
Magrath was a loyal supporter and active volunteer for the University; she served on the board’s Nominating, Research-Graduate Affairs and Undergraduate Life committees. She was a founding member of the Research-Graduate Affairs Committee when it was established in 1997.
She also was a member of the John M. Olin School of Business National Council.
Magrath was the first woman to receive the Olin School’s Distinguished Alumni Award.
She is survived by her husband, Terrence B. Magrath; her stepchildren, Kelly Ann Magrath and Michael Joseph Magrath; her sister, Barbara Ann Werckle; her brother, Theodore Hugh Busboom and his wife, Mary Jane Busboom; and several nieces, nephews and cousins.
In lieu of flowers, the family has requested that contributions be made to the Terrence B. and Katherine B. Magrath Scholarships at the Olin School of Business, Washington University, Campus Box 1082, St. Louis, MO 63130.