Banking Executive Dino De Vita

Every year, Crain’s Chicago Business, a leading weekly newspaper servicing the Chicagoland business community, publishes a list of their annual selection of the top 40 business professionals in this community under the age of 40. Always, Italian Americans are prominent on the list. This year is no exception. One of the selectees is Dino De Vita, Senior Vice President at the Northern Trust Company, Managing Director of its significant Personal Financial Services Group.

In the article, highlighting the career of this outstanding young Italian-American professional, it was mentioned:

For his first day in first grade, Dino De Vita showed up toting a briefcase. Referencing Michael J. Fox’s well-remembered character from the 1980s-era sitcom “Family Ties,” Mr. De Vita says, “I was like Alex P. Keaton going to school. I was ready to go to work.”

Later, as a preteen, he chose a sport he thought he could excel at — basketball — with the idea of obtaining a scholarship and becoming the first in his family to get a college degree. The son of a utility worker, Mr. De Vita says he knew his family couldn’t afford to pay his way — not unlike most of us second- and third-generation Italian Americans from our community.

It was mentioned in the Crain’s article that Mr. De Vita was the high school team’s most ardent gym rat, regularly peering through binoculars from his home to see whether there was a pickup game he could join at the playground three blocks away. After playing point guard for his high school team, Mr. De Vita won that free ride, to St. Cloud State University in Minnesota, later transferring to Wisconsin’s Ripon College, where he also excelled athletically.

Now a managing director in Northern Trust’s unit catering to wealthy individuals, Mr. De Vita manages a 15-person team in Chicago with a client portfolio of about $1 billion. He was one of two such directors nationwide chosen by Northern last year to test a new client model aimed at bringing trust, investment and other professionals together to serve clients with $10 million or less in assets to invest. That model is in effect firmwide in large part because of the results Dino and his team has produced.

As a Senior Vice President at The Northern Trust Company and as a Managing Director within the Personal Financial Services Group, Dino is responsible for the supervision of this group of interdisciplinary professionals who manage the financial needs for individuals and families. The team Dino manages is responsible for administering the complex banking, trust, and investment needs of Northern’s clients. Dino’s primary duty is to ensure overall client satisfaction by directing and coordinating the efforts of appropriate bank resources for timely delivery of quality service, issue resolution, and effective communication to clients.

Dino joined The Northern Trust Bank in November 1998. He worked in the Corporate and Institutional Services Fivision of Northern Trust servicing retirement plans for institutional clients across the country for two years. In 2000 he joined the Personal Financial Services group as a Portfolio Manager at The Northern Trust’s Newport Beach, California office. During his tenure as a Portfolio Manager, Dino managed complex investment solutions for a wide variety of clients and foundations. He began his current role as Managing Director in 2007.

Dino began his banking and investment management career in 1996 at Marshall & Ilsley Trust Corporation in Milwaukee, Wisconsin where he served for two years in the institutional division reviewing and administering corporate retirement plans.

Dino received a B.S degree in business administration and economics from Ripon College in Wisconsin and is a CFA charter holder and an active member of the CFA Institute.

During his career, Dino has gained experience serving on several boards for charitable organizations including the Orange County Chapter of The March of Dimes and FISH Harbor in Costa Mesa, Calif.

Dino Di Vita’s paternal grandfather immigrated from Ponte Buggianese, Pistoia, Italy when he was 6. He is who Dino was named after and, fun fact, he claimed to have learned to count to 10 in English from the American officers that were on the boat with him, on his way to this country, chasing the American dream. His maternal great-grandfather immigrated from Sicily from the town of Messina.

Another example of the best our community has to offer.