Anne Morrissey | Alum

CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES

“She was so proud of DePauw.” 

Anne Morrissey is speaking about her mother, Nancy Crane Heller ’60. Following her mother’s passing, Morrissey established the Nancy Crane Heller Endowed Fund at DePauw in her honor to support language faculty. “In a way, it was in her later years that I really came to understand how much she influenced my curiosity and love of language and how unusual it was for her to do some of the things she did,” says Morrissey.

Morrissey describes her mom as a trailblazer. “As a DePauw student, she studied abroad in Austria in 1959. It was the very first professor-led, junior semester abroad.” Morrissey notes that her mom was a lifelong learner, one who was fluent in French but also took up Spanish so she could communicate with Anne’s host family during a high school exchange program. Like her mother, Morissey attended both DePauw and Harvard Business School. Also like her mother, Morissey had a deep appreciation for the faculty who inspired her love of learning. 

Morrissey recalls conversations with her mom about professors they loved and how they shaped their learning. “Reminiscing about our teachers was a bridge in our relationship,” she says. Morrissey thinks back to the influence of Vincent Serpa, who passed away much too early, and to five years post-graduation, when she asked professor Nafhat Nasr for a Harvard Business School letter of recommendation. “He wrote me back to let me know he had gone back and re-read my thesis paper from five years prior. That still sits with me, just how unique and special that is.”     

Morrissey, now a leader in international finance and technology based in San Francisco, marvels at how the DePauw network knew her and helped her maximize her opportunities as a student. “I lived in Barcelona during a high school exchange program. And before going to college, I said I wanted to do ‘international business’ and, I will say, I probably had no idea what that meant. My Spanish was good, but I never anticipated all the doors that DePauw could open for me with my language skills.” 

It was at DePauw that she got connected to the Pan American Games taking place in Indianapolis as an aide de camp for a Central American dignitary. “I guided him around the city for different events. It was exciting.” During her sophomore year, she went on a mission trip to Guatemala to be a volunteer health educator. She would not have had that particular opportunity had Professor Jim Rambo not known of her language fluency and put her name forward.   

And finally, because DePauw was one of the few colleges at the time with a relationship in Barcelona, Morrissey was able to return to the city of her high school exchange program,  reunite with her host family, develop a new appreciation for the city and forge, in her words, “some of the most special friendships with other DePauw students that I’ve held onto for all these years.”