Photos: Lance Thurman
Mark Keller ’78 will be the first to admit that his path from Wheaton to Wall Street was anything but straight. A double major in archaeology and near eastern studies, he spent his undergraduate years deciphering ancient Greek texts and reconstructing lost civilizations—not exactly the traditional pre-finance curriculum. Yet today, as the CEO, Chief Investment Officer, and cofounder of Confluence Investment Management in St. Louis, and a veteran of nearly five decades in the investment industry, Keller credits those unconventional studies with shaping the analytical mind that has driven his success.
Keller arrived at Wheaton intending to major in economics, a plan that lasted roughly two semesters. “I took two economics courses and didn’t like it very much,” he recalled with a laugh—noting the irony of that aversion, given where he ultimately landed. What captivated him instead was an Old Testament archaeology course near the end of his freshman year. A lifelong history enthusiast who had conducted independent research on stock market crashes as a high school senior, Keller found in archaeology something that satisfied his hunger for synthesis and depth.
His passion for ancient languages ran equally deep. Though Wheaton had discontinued its Greek major by the time he enrolled, the ancient language studies program that replaced it—blending Greek, Latin, and a smattering of Hebrew—served his purposes well. Keller had come to Wheaton hoping to read the New Testament in its original Greek, a goal he pursued with the same rigor he brought to his archaeological coursework.
He describes archaeology as one of the most intellectually demanding fields in the humanities, and not merely because of the painstaking work of excavation. “Archaeology is like going through a big dumpster in a neighborhood and trying to figure out as much as you can about everybody that lives there,” he explained. That process demands a synthesis of history, religion, language, literature, and art—virtually the entire spectrum of the liberal arts folded into a single discipline.
After graduating, Keller was accepted into the University of Chicago’s prestigious Near Eastern archaeology doctoral program. He left quickly, however, when it became clear that even the program’s top graduates were struggling to find academic positions. Newly married and unwilling to subject his wife to years of uncertainty, he pivoted—first toward law school, then, by fortunate accident, toward finance. A part-time job as a stock records clerk at A.G. Edwards & Sons, taken while attending law school, changed everything. He loved the work as much as he had loved archaeology, left law school after a year, and joined A.G. Edwards’ research department as a junior analyst in 1979.
What surprised him, once fully immersed in investment analysis, was how naturally his training transferred. Synthesizing mountains of data, identifying what truly matters, and building a coherent picture from disparate fragments—it was, he realized, precisely what he had been doing in his archaeology seminars all along.
“The intellectual tools I learned at Wheaton proved to be very valuable,” Keller said. “I’m highly confident I ended up in the career the Lord wanted me in—I just took a few interesting detours getting there.”
