Gilbert Edward LeVasseur, Jr.

Gilbert "Gil" LeVasseur, the oldest of three children, was born in 1944 in Washington, D.C., where his father was stationed in the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II. LeVasseur's father came from a family of poor French farmers who had immigrated to Iowa.

LeVasseur's mother was born to German immigrants who settled in Montana. Because her father was unable to care for her after her mother's untimely death, LeVasseur's mother spent most of her childhood in boarding homes.

Shortly after LeVasseur's father was discharged from the Army, the family moved to Los Angeles. Although his parents were bright and hardworking, the family struggled financially. His father supported the family with two jobs as a woodworker in a furniture factory and as a milkman.

His mother managed the household and even made much of the family's clothing. "My mother was very resilient, with a strong work ethic and firm principles," says LeVasseur. "With our homemade clothes, we definitely stood out as poorer than most of our classmates, but my mother made sure that our clothes were always clean and pressed. I credit her as an important source of my self-confidence and my ability to think independently. I remember when she told us not to worry about what other kids were wearing or doing. '˜You be the ones who lead, and let the others follow,' she would tell us. That stuck with me."

His mother's sisters and their children sometimes lived with LeVasseur's family, which swelled the household to nine people in a two-bedroom, one-bath house that operated on a small food budget. LeVasseur recalls coming home one day from grammar school to find his beloved dog missing. His parents had given his dog away because they could no longer afford to feed it.

The family's meager finances were just one of the challenges that LeVasseur faced during childhood. More significantly, his home environment was ruled by the whims and emotional volatility of his aunt's and his mother's mental illnesses. Everyday interactions were stressful. From an early age, LeVasseur found relief and freedom by getting out of the house. He tried to spend as much time as he could at his friends' houses, where he reveled in the normalcy and peace of their homes. When he was old enough to work, he found solace in the escape it provided him and also discovered that his work ethic earned him responsible positions.

At the age of 10, LeVasseur began to work by mowing lawns and cleaning windows. His industrious nature soon had him hiring friends to meet the needs of his growing customer base. His success boosted his self-confidence and further spurred his business ambitions. "Whenever I could get out of the house and make money, I would do it," he says. "By the time I was 14, I got my first real job, making hardware for a casket builder. In the summers, I would bike from that job to a local gas station where I worked the night shift and became the night shift manager at age 14. I soon earned enough money to buy my first car for $500." LeVasseur maintained a two-job schedule, including occasional night shifts, throughout high school.

LeVasseur credits his father for his entrepreneurial spirit. He recalls how one of his father's friends, an electrical engineer who was looking for a job after returning from the war, asked LeVasseur's dad for a ride to a job interview at an aerospace plant. While they were there, the father talked his way into a job for himself. "Within five years, he was running the plant," recalls LeVasseur, happy that his father's days of delivering milk were over.

In junior high, LeVasseur excelled in sports and captained his football, basketball, and baseball teams. He also discovered his lifelong affinity for surfing, a sport that helped shape the person he is today. In high school, he focused on gymnastics and captained the team that went to the Los Angeles city championships.

One of LeVasseur's teammates introduced him to the gymnastics coach at Long Beach State College, who helped him apply and get accepted. "College became a pivotal point in my life," he says. "Up to that point, I thought the breadth of opportunity lay in the local manufacturing plant. Now, my eyes were opening to a whole new world."

LeVasseur, who continued to work two jobs throughout college, reveled in his business classes. He became close with his economics professor, who suggested that, to truly satisfy his love of business, he should attend the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). LeVasseur took that advice and transferred to UCLA, where he studied under professors who recognized his potential and pushed him to excel. He graduated in 1966 with a bachelor's degree in finance, the first person in his family to get a college degree.

Upon graduation, a UCLA finance professor offered LeVasseur a job as an analyst at his firm, the American Investment Counseling Company. This job was part of a work-study program that allowed LeVasseur to attend the University of Southern California's graduate school of business in the late afternoons and evenings. LeVasseur earned his master's degree in finance in two years and launched his business career.

In 1968, at age 24, LeVasseur was hired as assistant to the president of Canada's International Chemical & Nuclear Corp. (ICN), where his job was to acquire other Canadian drug makers. In two years, he built ICN into Canada's third largest pharmaceutical business.

In 1970, LeVasseur purchased a small, struggling specialty food processing company. At that time, he had little money to invest. "I told the owner I had no money, but I wanted to buy her company," he says. "She looked at me like I was crazy." LeVasseur subsequently negotiated a "bootstrap" acquisition, which enabled him to make a modest initial deposit and pay the balance of the purchase price out of future profits. When the business reached a stable growth path, LeVasseur took the opportunity to further pursue his career.

That career has been defined by LeVasseur's creativity and his ability to see business opportunities not readily apparent to others, and by his incredible work ethic and force of will. In 1973, LeVasseur joined a former ICN director to buy stock in CHC Corp., Inc., a publicly held nursing home company. They subsequently convinced CHC's founders to let them sell the nursing homes and reinvest the proceeds into a specialty publishing business. During the next five years, LeVasseur served as director of the company and was responsible for all acquisitions. He ultimately became president of a newly acquired publishing subsidiary, which generated most of the enterprise's profits.

American Broadcasting Company (ABC), which had also decided to diversify into specialty publishing, took notice of their success and sought to have LeVasseur's team build for ABC a larger version of the company that the team had previously built for themselves. He and his team sold their business to ABC, and LeVasseur subsequently led the acquisitions of five specialty publishing companies that formed the core of ABC's new $250 million publishing division.

In 1980, LeVasseur was offered a partnership opportunity with the Whitehead Family Investments fund in Greenwich, Connecticut. This arrangement allowed him to work three weeks each month for the fund and one week on his own account. During that time, LeVasseur identified a publishing firm he wanted to buy. He secured a loan for the acquisition and repaid it within a year with profits from the business, to which he dedicated himself full time. In 1990, he sold that publishing company to Thomson Corp. for more than 30 times his initial investment.

In 1998, LeVasseur, at last able to fulfill his dream of running his own investment firm using his own capital, formed LeVasseur Capital Partners LLC. He is chairman and CEO of that company, which is based in Newport Beach, California. LeVasseur and his team manage his own capital as well as the assets of a select group of high net worth investors. The firm has delivered compound annual investment returns of 20 percent before fees since its inception.

Family is extremely important to LeVasseur, and he has enjoyed watching his son, Brent, and daughter, Brooke, launch their own careers and flourish. In 1986, he married his wife, Victoria, which he says is "the best thing that's ever happened to me."

LeVasseur realizes that the mental illness present in his childhood home environment could have had a long-lasting effect on his life, but he sees the adversity he faced back then as a blessing. "I was motivated at an early age to make my own way and to be independent," he says. "We have no control over the cards that are dealt to us, but we are responsible for using our God-given strengths to reach our full potential."

Asked to define success, LeVasseur says, "My financial independence has given me the freedom to make choices that align with my ideals, which are to pursue my career goals, surround myself with people I care about and respect, have a loving and peaceful family life, and use my time to help others in need."

Gil and Victoria LeVasseur are longtime philanthropists who support charitable organizations throughout California's Orange County. His has served as an active board member and benefactor to the Simon Foundation for Education and Housing. LeVasseur is passionate about its mission of supporting children who demonstrate strong potential despite having faced adversities in life. "These kids remind me of myself at that age, and I want them to reach their potential, as I was able to do," he says.

LeVasseur has also directed his philanthropic activities toward the arts. He was president of the Laguna Art Museum, after first becoming involved when the institution was having financial troubles. He was instrumental in founding the Orange County Museum of Art, where he is currently director emeritus of the board of trustees. He has also supported the Orange County Performing Arts Center and the University of California at Irvine.

When speaking with youths, LeVasseur offers this advice: "It's important to set high goals for yourself, to take calculated risks early in life, and to not be afraid to fail. Failure is just one step on the road to success. I've had numerous situations in my career that have not gone as well as I intended, but, in each case, I made it a point to learn from them."

Honored by his Horatio Alger Award, LeVasseur says, "The principles of the Horatio Alger Association are ones that I have lived by throughout my life. I am enthused by the opportunity to provide a helping hand to those unique young people who have proven they possess the spirit, strength, and discipline required to overcome adversity in their own lives and who also have demonstrated a fierce ambition and determination to improve their lives. In spite of what some may say or believe, the American dream is not a myth or a relic of years gone by. I very much look forward to doing my part in helping our Scholars achieve their own personal dreams."

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