When Courtney Shea moved from investment banking into financial advisory work in 2009, she did not leave her experience behind. Colleagues say her banking background helped her understand execution, while her legal training gave her a strong grasp of bond documents and transaction underpinnings — a combination that became an advantage on financings from Illinois' $10 billion pension bond to Chicago's $3 billion debt restructuring.
That ability to see a transaction from multiple sides became a defining strength across Shea's career. She moved among banking, financial advisory and leadership roles while drawing on legal training throughout, using that range to structure complex financings, develop new approaches and mentor other professionals — a career that will be recognized with her induction into The Bond Buyer's Hall of Fame of municipal finance.
"As a financial advisor, her experience as an investment banker was helpful," said Eric Rockhold, managing director at BofA Merrill Lynch, who worked with Shea on large financings for Illinois. Her legal expertise also gave her "a very good sense of the bond documents and the legal underpinnings" of deals.
Shea built that range deliberately over a career that rarely kept her in a single professional lane.
After earning a bachelor's degree from the University of Notre Dame, a J.D. from Loyola University Law School and an MBA from the University of Chicago School of Business, Shea entered pubic finance as a vice president at Drexel Burnham Lambert, bringing both legal and business training into the market from the start.
She held the same role at Kemper Financial Services before joining Artemis Capital as a shareholder, managing director and head of Midwest public finance.
"She is very discerning, deft and adept," Robin Wiessmann, executive director and CEO of the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency and a founding principal and former president of Artemis, said in a text, calling Shea "an integral part of our leadership team at Artemis."
After six years at Artemis, Shea joined Salomon Smith Barney as Midwest director of public finance. She later served as national head of municipal finance at LaSalle Financial Services, a subsidiary of ABN AMRO, and in 2006 joined Siebert Brandford Shank & Co. as head of its Chicago office.
In 2009, Shea moved from investment banking into financial advisory work, leading the Midwest office for Acacia Financial Group and later joining Columbia Capital Management as a managing member. She subsequently became president of Continental Testing Services, a professional licensure exam services company.
The breadth of those roles showed up most clearly in the complexity and variety of the financings she helped execute.
Rockhold said Shea was "instrumental" on Illinois'
Shea also played key roles in a $700 million bankruptcy-proof entity for Iowa's tobacco settlement securitization and a $3 billion restructuring of Chicago general obligation debt.
At Artemis, Shea led the creation of a structure that consolidated rental-car sites at airports into a single facility — an approach that subsequently became an industry standard.
"Competing against Courtney always brought out your best work," said former Chicago Chief Financial Officer Lois Scott, who co-founded Women in Public Finance with Shea, Sarah Eubanks and Nancy Remar, and worked with Shea across contexts. "She literally raises the bar of every room she walks into."
Shea applied that same expectation of broader perspective and stronger performance to the people around her, particularly women entering and advancing in public finance.
When Holly Horn, now senior advisor to the president and CEO of Assured Guaranty, entered public finance from healthcare administration, she was struck by how few women were in the industry.
"Courtney has been a trailblazer for women," Horn said. Shea was always "supporting women, always willing to chat about their careers, always willing to talk about leadership. … She definitely reached back and pulled people up."
She's "an innovator," said Bill Hogan, senior managing director and co-head of public finance at Assured Guaranty. She "really respects the market and wants it to do well," he said, and "there are so many people I could point to that Courtney's tried to be there for."
That impulse became institutionalized when Shea helped create Women in Public Finance, co-founding the organization to create a network for women in an industry where they remained significantly underrepresented.
"We wanted to provide a place where people could network, mentor one another and educate themselves," Shea said of WPF. "Thirty years later, I think we've fulfilled our goals."
Scott affectionately dubbed her co-founder "the queen of style" — "Nobody rocks a Hermes scarf like Courtney," she said — and suggested she came by her public service calling honestly.
Shea's mother, the first woman associate of a big Chicago law firm, was "her sounding board, her role model and her icon," Scott said.
Shea said her mother never allowed her "to believe being a woman was an excuse for not achieving. I had two parents who were in public service, and I grew up in a household where public service was important." When Shea had the chance to pursue a public finance career, she said, "it was a good mesh."
Shea has served on boards ranging from the Center for Municipal Finance and the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board's Compliance Advisory Board to the Joffrey Ballet, Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Milken Institute, as well as the boards of Assured Guaranty and Power Solutions International.
She has also received Northeast Women in Public Finance's
