Kevin Morris Wilcox

Sometimes Kevin Wilcox forgets about the view.

Yet there it is, out the floor-toceiling window of his office on the 25th floor of the Stephens Inc. tower. All of downtown Little Rock is within sight — the neighboring skyscrapers, the perfectly straight city streets, the church steeples peeking above the spring-green trees.

The world in miniature.

Even on a gusty, overcast April afternoon — the low sky the color of dull stainless steel — it’s a grand view, stretching south, across downtown and into the distant, blurry hills beyond the city limits.

Wilcox, though, doesn’t spend his days staring out windows. As a managing director at Stephens Capital Partners, Wilcox, who turned 51 on April 15, has worked his way to the 25th floor since starting at Stephens in 1992.

One doesn’t earn a view like this by gazing at said view. One doesn’t settle here. Not in the high stakes world of investment banking. Not when the money is Stephens money.

And on this recent Friday, dressed smartly in a crisp white dress shirt and deep blue suit, Wilcox is busy. There’s work, always work, to be done.

In 2007, Warren Stephens, chairman, president and chief executive officer of Stephens Inc., asked Wilcox “to come up here and join the group that helps manage the family wealth and look for companies for the family to invest in,” Wilcox says.

“It’s a lot of fun,” he says. “If an investment doesn’t get off to a good start, there’s pressure. Maybe self-imposed. You want to do a good job for the family. Your partners are all invested in the deals, too, so I don’t want to let my partners down. I don’t want to let Warren and the family down.”

But, he says, the family is “incredibly patient and a great family to work for.”

Some people with jobs such as Wilcox’s head home to unwind from work, recharging with their family. Wilcox does that with his wife, Stephanie, and their three children — one in college and two teens at home.

But Wilcox also finds comfort through his church, though this time of year it’s keeping him occupied as well. The longtime member of Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church is co-chairman with Little Rock lawyer Philip Miron of the 33rd annual International Greek Food Festival.

The event — with 30,000 or so expected to attend — is Friday through May 21 at the church.

“It’s an amazing event,” says Wilcox, who has served on the church board for eight years and is serving his third year as board president. He helps “make sure the trains run on time.”

“What I think is special about the church and the festival is, if you go to a metropolitan city — New York, Chicago, Washington, D.C. — you will have a Greek Orthodox Church,” Wilcox says. “You’ll have a Russian Orthodox Church. A Romanian Orthodox Church. Ukrainian Orthodox Church. You’ll have Lebanese or Syrian churches. In a place like Little Rock, it can’t support those, so what you have is one melting pot Orthodox Church, one Eastern Orthodox Church that has all those nationalities there.”

It’s that mixture of ethnic backgrounds and cultures that helps make the food festival “great,” Wilcox says. That, and the fact that even as the festival has grown, it has stayed true to its homegrown roots.

“All the pastries are homemade,” Wilcox says. “It’s hard work. A lot of these people put in a lot of time and effort on behalf of the church. It makes it feel like a small event even though it has thousands of people.”

Wilcox is not a baker; he prefers to pitch in where he’s better suited — the church’s finances.

During the holiday season of 1991, Wilcox met “a pretty girl” on an airplane bound for New York, where Wilcox worked on Wall Street.

Wilcox, who was born and reared in Little Rock, had spotted Stephanie Pappas a week earlier on a different flight. He recognized her from the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville where he graduated in 1988. She was a UA graduate as well, a year behind him, but he didn’t really know her. Still, they had mutual friends, so when he spotted her the second time in a week, he approached her.

“The second time we were on a plane together I was smart enough to get a date out of it,” he says.

While in New York, the pair visited a Greek Orthodox Church in Astoria, Queens. Both sides of her family are Greek; Wilcox was raised Methodist. The two started dating, even though Stephanie lived and worked in Washington and Wilcox worked for Investcorp in New York.

INTEREST IN FINANCE

Wilcox had a long-held interest in finance, though there was no family connection to the business. His father, Jerry Wilcox, was an architect, and his mother, Nancy, was involved in retail and homemaking while raising Wilcox and an older brother, Lance. (Wilcox’s dad died in 1999, but his mother still lives in Little Rock, working part time at Heifer International, helping with the Wilcox children and traveling.)

Kevin Wilcox grew up in the Heights area and graduated from Catholic High School for Boys in 1984 before heading to UA, where he earned a degree in finance.

He remembers reading Forbes magazine in the Catholic High School library during study hall and being intrigued. For whatever reason, he was drawn to the industry.

“I would say I was pretty fortunate that I did kind of figure out what I wanted to do early on, so I wasn’t one of those who had to try a bunch of different classes and then figure it out late,” he says. “I kind of knew immediately that’s what I wanted to do.”

He had a summer job with Stephens while at the UA and joined Lehman Brothers in its mergers and acquisition department in 1988 after graduation. He left Lehman Brothers for Investcorp in 1990.

The years on Wall Street were a “good time,” he says. He was in his 20s, living and working in New York. He worked a lot of hours in Lehman Brothers’ two-year analyst program, analyzing mergers and acquisitions and helping run numbers on transactions.

“It was an exciting time,” he says. “I love the city. Always have. I was just ecstatic to get a job like that.

“It was a great confidence booster. … When you’re working side by side with people from the Ivy League colleges, and you’re doing as well or better than them, I think it’s definitely a confidence booster, and so I think that was a good way to start a career.”

By 1992, though, he was thinking of returning to Little Rock for a job at Stephens.

“I was always intrigued and always wanted to come back here when the opportunity was right,” he says. “I figured I would go to Wall Street and learn the business and then hopefully have a chance to come back to Stephens, and that’s the way it worked out.”

Stephanie wasn’t so sure. Not about the Stephens job, but about returning to Arkansas. She liked life in D.C.

So, a deal was struck. “She said, ‘I’ll go back to’ — she called it, ‘your state’ — ‘if you go to my church,’” Wilcox says. “She was the prettiest girl I’d ever dated, and so I was just like, ‘Done.’ That was a quick decision. I thought about that for about five seconds.”

Wilcox converted to Greek Orthodox, the couple were married and now they are the parents of three: Samuel, 19, a freshman at Southern Methodist University in Dallas; Matthew, 16, a sophomore at Catholic High; and Isabel, 13, a seventh-grader at The Anthony School.

The family is very involved in the Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church. Both boys were altar boys; Isabel dances during the festival; and Stephanie coordinates volunteers for the festival.

The Rev. Nicholas Verdaris is glad Wilcox saw that “pretty girl” on the plane. Verdaris, priest at the church since 1999, says, “Kevin is so valuable not only for his hard work but also the example, the pursuit of excellence, that he applies in all aspects of his life.

“When you’re talking about Kevin, you’re not only talking about someone who’s very gifted but a man who really works to create balance,” he says. “He sets aside time not only for work, but for his family, for his church, for charitable causes. He does so with a lot of grace and energy. He’s definitely someone who people are drawn to and work with because Kevin walks the walk. He’s a man of great faith and love.”

Wilcox worked in mergers and acquisitions from 1992 to 2003 at Stephens before being promoted to run the firm’s investment banking division in 2003.

MORE THAN JUST PARTNERS

In 2007, he joined Stephens Capital Partners, where he looks for investment opportunities (the family is invested in about 40 companies) and sits on the boards of eight companies with corporate offices from Salt Lake City and New York to Hilton Head, S.C.

Warren Stephens says Wilcox is “bright, thoughtful and hard working.”

“He works hard, but he also — he works smart; he’s very thoughtful,” Stephens says. “Every decision has ramifications, so he’s very thoughtful in the way he considers how … if you do one thing it’s going to affect other things.”

Wilcox says the best part of his job is — “no question” — the relationships he forms with the chief executive officers of the companies that Stephens Capital Partners invest in.

“When you are partnered with these people for years, you become very close to them,” Wilcox says. “You go through good times and bad with them, and it’s not a short-term relationship, and I really enjoy that.

“You develop a real bond with these people. They’re your partner; they’re running the company every day. You’re there to help them, and you become close personal friends. That’s a very rewarding relationship.”

That relationship is reciprocated, says Michael Gottdenker, chairman and CEO of Hargray Communications, a regional telecommunications company based in Hilton Head.

“There are many attributes that make Kevin an effective businessman,” Gottdenker says. “Some of these attributes can be found in many successful bankers/investors — things like intelligence, good judgment and hard work. But what makes Kevin so special is that he is a great listener, cares deeply and really brings his ‘full self’ to everything that he does. He is always thinking of ideas that can help make our business better. He is an absolute pleasure to work with, and I feel lucky to consider him a partner.”

Of course, it’s not all family, church and work for Wilcox. He also supports UA, where he is a current member of the Campaign Arkansas committee. The group has the goal of raising $1 billion to support the university’s academic mission and other key priorities.

He’s also a season ticketholder for Razorbacks football and basketball and is a New York Mets baseball fan.

When it comes to church or charities, it would be easy for someone like Wilcox to sign a check and walk away. He and his family give money to what they believe in, but Wilcox says,“you got to put the time in. It is easier to give money than to give your time — there’s no question about that. But I would rather lead by example.”

“I’ve gotten so much out of that church. It’s been good for my kids to see me involved. … I’m trying to be a good role model for them. … I think my family has benefited a lot from being associated with that church, so I have a lot of loyalty.

“I never would have dreamed how deep I would be into it just because I saw a pretty girl on an airplane.”