In Memoriam: Elizabeth Bramwell (1940–2015)

It was with great sadness that ISI learned of the passing of Elizabeth Bramwell earlier this month. Liz was actively involved with ISI for more than fifty years, dating back to her days running an ISI student group at Bryn Mawr College in the early 1960s.

Liz Bramwell was a major figure in the field of money management. She was the founding manager of Gabelli & Co.’s growth mutual fund, leading that fund to extraordinary success. In 1994 she founded her own asset-management firm, Bramwell Capital Management. According to Bloomberg, she “became a beacon for women in the field”—though she never cared to be a feminist role model. “I take a gender-neutral approach,” she told Financial Planning magazine in 2008. “The thing about portfolio management is it’s fairly measurable. It’s your performance against benchmarks.”

Active as an ISI student leader in college, Liz never lost the ISI connection. Her son, Austin, was an ISI Honors Scholar in the late 1990s, and Liz became one of ISI’s most loyal supporters. She was an inaugural member of ISI’s William F. Buckley Jr. Society, and she regularly attended ISI events, including the annual Dinner for Western Civilization in New York City and the Buckley Society Leadership Retreats in Wilmington, Delaware.

In recent weeks Liz was particularly excited to learn that ISI was planning a weeklong leadership conference this summer at her alma mater, Bryn Mawr. She was looking forward to visiting the conference, and she was even considering ISI’s invitation to address the students there. Her experiences as a young conservative student, she said, had taught her to be an “independent thinker” and proved instrumental in her career success.

All of us at ISI will dearly miss this alumna, friend, and supporter.

Requiescat in pace.