Forty Under 40: Tammie Miller

By Mike Dries
From The Business Journal Milwaukee
February 16, 2007

Tammie Miller's recipe for success includes a few ingredients not typically found in the career cookbook of her chosen field.

Miller, 38, is an investment banker and chartered financial analyst, plying her craft with Milwaukee's Grace Matthews, Inc., where, as vice president, she executes mergers and acquisitions, focusing on middle-market companies.

Miller came to the field circuitously, earning an undergraduate degree from the University of Chicago in Latin American studies and astrophysics, a major and minor not often associated with offering memoranda and integrated financial models.

"The Latin American debt crisis was unfolding when I completed me undergraduate degree," Miller explains. "Banks were looking for people who could speak Spanish and had at least some level of intelligence."

The fact that Miller met both criteria opened the door to a job as a corporate finance analyst with Shearson Lehman Brothers Inc. in Chicago. After two years with Shearson, she returned to the University of Chicago, where she earned an MBA with an emphasis in finance.

Having completed stints with a few other investment banking firms, Miller moved to Milwaukee to take a job with United Wisconsin Services. Before joining Grace Matthews in 2002, she served as a senior vice president of operations at Milwaukee's Innovative Resource Group where she oversaw 400 employees and was responsible for $50 million in revenue.

What drives Miller is her insatiable curiosity. She says she loves her work generally because "you learn so much about so many industries." She says she loves Grace Matthews specifically because she's "surrounded by focused, intelligent people."

"The desire to continue learning is at the bottom of this," she says.

Her desire to learn, moreover, extends far beyond the four corners of investment banking. She's a licensed pilot and skydiver. She's scuba dived shipwrecks in Lake Michigan, ran a marathon and recently completed an introduction-to-welding course.

"I just like exploring other things," says Miller, who, as a mother of two children, has "learned to squeeze a lot into my time."

The includes serving as chief financial officer on the board of Walker's Point Youth & Family Center, a Milwaukee homeless center for runaways.

"Tammie serves as a role model for so many for the way she is able to balance her career and family life," says Gretta Marcelle, principal of Marcelle Consulting L.L.C., Milwaukee, and a fellow board member of Miller's at the center. "Her cooperative spirit, her compassion and her flexible style make her an outstanding leader."