Helping good people do great things’

Pegine Grayson '87 helps families design their charitable giving

-By Lori Craig

Pegine Grayson ’87 was enjoying her work as a nonprofit consultant after serving for five years as executive director of the Western Center on Law & Poverty (WCLP). But in the summer of 2010, at the behest of a good friend, she had what turned out to be a fateful meeting with Julie Lytle Nesbit, vice president and director of philanthropic services at Whittier Trust Company in South Pasadena.

Pegine Grayson '87 is vice president/philanthropic services at Whittier Trust Company in South Pasadena.

“I listened to her tell me for a half hour about how she had the best job on the planet, and I was thinking, ‘Maybe she really does,’” Grayson says.

A year and a half after joining Whittier Trust as vice president/philanthropic services, Grayson remains sold on the superlative job description.

“I love the work,” she says. “I get to help good people do great things with their money every day. I love being able to help direct grants to worthy causes and to go in so deeply and personally with my clients who are realizing that philanthropy can play an extraordinary role in unifying their families and preparing their children to inherit wealth and to just be good human beings.”

Grayson offers philanthropic advisement and counseling as one part of the wealth management company’s turnkey foundation administration services. Some clients already have a well-established foundation or donor-advised fund, while others are just beginning to design their charitable giving strategies. Grayson helps these families establish objectives for their philanthropy, find causes that speak to them, and implement a plan to direct their resources.

Recently, Grayson headed to Los Angeles’s Skid Row to meet with a client and his two adult children, whom she had helped to establish a mission statement and grant-making guidelines for their new family foundation. In search of a meaningful cause to fund, she guided them through site visits to charities offering mentoring and services for homeless youth.

“All families really enjoy the giving part,” Grayson says. “Through philanthropy, family members get to see each other in entirely new ways, and I get to facilitate those conversations. We ask clients to identify the values that define their family: What kind of a legacy do they want to have?”

Lytle Nesbit was so impressed with Grayson’s nonprofit work that she encouraged her to apply for an opening in her department at that first meeting, two summers ago.

“Pegine has an amazing combination of understanding the business side of charities and giving, but she has the heart as well,” Lytle Nesbit says. “She has a great deal of empathy and doesn’t have her own agenda: She cares about doing good in the community and helping her clients succeed so they can do good in the community.”

Grayson is finding her legal background valuable as well. One ongoing project is a bylaws review process to bring her foundations into compliance with the California Nonprofit Integrity Act.

“USC Law was a fabulous education and I put my legal training to use on a regular basis here, because there are lots of compliance issues it helps me to spot,” Grayson says. But going corporate was a big step. “This is my first foray into the for-profit world and a private company, so it was very important to me that the company be one of high integrity and good reputation. Whittier Trust is a wonderful company to be associated with.”

Grayson knew she would enjoy being on the grantmaking side of philanthropy, having seen WCLP through what was a difficult time for all legal service organizations.

Jeffrey S. Davidson, a partner with Kirkland & Ellis LLP who was president of the WCLP board during Grayson’s tenure, says Grayson helped rejuvenate WCLP and its finances while “working tirelessly to further its fundamental mission to advance and protect the rights of lower-income Californians.

“Her intelligence, managerial and diplomatic skills, and fundamental good nature earned her the respect of the legal services community throughout the state,” Davidson says. “I don’t know anyone involved in that community who doesn’t hold her in the highest regard, nor anyone who doesn’t genuinely like her.”

-From the Winter 2012 USC Law Deliberations