From Nigeria to Chapel Hill: How Lili Engelhardt Planned Her Way to Purpose

I knew I wanted to interview Lili Engelhardt the moment she asked about my life.

We were at a networking event, surrounded by people ready to pitch themselves, and Lili wanted to know about me. It reminded me of Stephen Covey: seek first to understand before being understood. That's apparently how she moves through the world.

So we met at Coco Bistro and Bar on a Wednesday morning—everything 100% vegan, and trust me, you'd never know it. (The vegan bacon? So crunchy you'd never know. And the chipotle? Unexpected and delicious.) Between bites, Lili told me a story I wasn't expecting.

Lili grew up in Evanston, just outside Chicago. When she was six, her parents divorced, and her mother remarried a professor of African Studies at Northwestern. A few years later, the whole family—including her stepsister (her age) and stepbrother (a couple years older)—moved to Nigeria for two years.

"We were in Kano and Zaria in the north," she said. "It was a very life-changing experience for me as a child."

They were the only white kids in the school. But that's not what stayed with her.

"It really formed a sense of curiosity when people have different views than I do," she explained. "Because everybody's view is valid. It's just different. And maybe I haven't been exposed to it. Maybe I don't understand it."

Coming back to the U.S. was harder than leaving. Her parents moved the family into a wealthier neighborhood they couldn't really afford—all for the schools—and Lili found herself surrounded by what she calls "waste and lack of understanding of the outside world." She'd seen real poverty—people starving on the sides of roads. The experience drove home the devastating effects of food insecurity, an issue that remains important to her today. “The adjustment was jarring.”

But that early exposure to different perspectives? It never left her.

Lili started at UC Berkeley but found it too big. No cell phones, no internet—she made friends freshman year, came back sophomore year, and couldn't find them. She didn't have a mentor to guide her through. And the math department wasn't what she wanted. "I wanted applied math, I want to use it," she said. "And their focus was much more on hypothetical math."

Northwestern had a program called Mathematical Methods in the Social Sciences (MMSS) that combined applied math with social science—exactly what she was looking for. She transferred, majored in economics and math, and came out with no idea what she wanted to do.

So she gave herself a decision point: Solomon Brothers investment banking, two-year financial analyst program. Eighty-hour weeks. No life. Learn a lot.

"I knew I didn't want to continue in banking," she said afterward. "Wasn't for me."

She'd been admitted to Kellogg but wanted something truly international—not an American business school with 20% international students. At her farewell dinner, a friend from the San Francisco office said something that changed everything.

"She said, 'Well, if I could do anything, I would move to Paris.'"

Lili's response? "Let's go."

She asked Kellogg to defer. They said no. She went anyway.

In Paris, Lili ended up trading 7-to-10-year French government bonds on the MATIF and improving her language. She discovered INSEAD, an international business school in Fontainebleau, where the largest nationality represented was French, at just 10%. The rest was the world. She got in.

What followed was a whirlwind: marketing at L'Oreal (the corporate culture didn't work for her), back to Chicago at US Robotics (a modem maker—the founder apparently liked the book I, Robot), then on to Silicon Valley to join a web development company. They sent her to London to open their European offices. She acquired five companies in seven countries in 18 months.

"I was done. So exhausted."

She stayed in London and co-founded Xchanging, a business process outsourcing company—the model was to carve cost centers out of companies and turn them into profit centers. Their first client was BAE Systems; they spun out the HR department into its own business.

Then she needed a break. She'd been running hard since Solomon Brothers. She moved to New York City—she always wanted to live there.

The timing was July 2001.

Lili was living near Canal Street when her friend called that morning.

"I went outside, and there's a group of people outside and we saw the second tower fall," she said. "It was so unreal that it felt like watching a movie. Your mind just can't comprehend that it's real."

She couldn't go home for two weeks—everything below 14th Street was closed. So she got to work.

She helped create Here is New York, a photo book documenting the towers. People could bring in any picture they had, from groundbreaking to that day. She also joined the New York City Partnership and helped run their clearinghouse, connecting businesses that wanted to give with those that needed help—calling cards from AT&T, furniture, whatever people needed.

"One of the things that was amazing was how the city came together," she said. "Anybody who had anything to give, gave it. A bar would be open, and they'd be giving free drinks. A restaurant would be giving free food. Anything to support those around them.  There were vigils with hundreds of people in squares and parks. It was a community that came together in an amazing way."

Lili met her husband on Match.com in New York. ("We just knew," she said.) His career at Ciba Specialty Chemicals took them to Basel, Switzerland, right at the corner of France, Germany, and Switzerland.

When BASF acquired the company, they offered him a job, but he was concerned about the corporate culture fit. They decided to return to the U.S. But where?

"We laid out a map and had our non-negotiables," Lili said. "Cost of living, interesting people, good weather, good schools."

She walked me through the logic: "If you do cost of living, the West Coast and the Northeast go away. If you do weather, the Northeast and the Midwest go away. If you do interesting people, you kind of end up in a university town. And then you add good schools..."

They had a cousin in Apex. Seemed like a nice place.

So here they are.

(Well—almost. There was a brief detour to Beijing, where her husband took a CTO role at Bluestar. It did not work out for a variety of reasons. Three months later, they were back. They hadn't even sold the house.)

Lili took time off to raise her two kids. Her daughter is now a sophomore at Waseda University in Tokyo—she did an exchange program between her junior and senior year of high school, fell in love with the city, and decided to go to school there. Her son is a high school senior here.

But after years focused on her family, Lili wanted to find herself again.

"I was a mother, I was a wife... but you can kind of lose yourself in service of others without something of your own," she said.

A friend introduced her to a framework—three overlapping circles: What do you love to do? Can you make money at it? Is there a clear path to get there?

Her mother had always told her to become a financial planner. ("We never listen to our moms, right?") But Lili's image of financial planning was dry portfolio management. That changed when her cousin, an Edward Jones advisor in Apex, spent an hour and a half describing what she actually did.

"She talked about how much she loved her work because she got to help people make their lives better using finance," Lili said. "And I'm like, wow—if I could do that, that would be amazing."

Today, Lili creates written financial strategies for her clients. It starts with what matters to them—what they want, who's important, what they're hoping for—and works backward to the money.

"You take the money, and you start to ask: Is this engine going to get you where you want to go?" she explained. "What do we do to make it more effective? How do we make it more tax-efficient?"

She lit up, describing the puzzle of it all. This is where her joy lives.

Edward Jones is the largest privately held investment firm in the country, which means they're not beholden to shareholders. They've committed to becoming a financial planning firm—not just investment management—and they're pouring resources into the software and tools to make that possible.

What Lili appreciates most is the culture. Before she joined, she informationally interviewed people at Edward Jones. Every time she asked why they did this work, she got the same answer: "I get to help make people's lives better using finance."

Advisors don't compete with each other. If someone is already with Edward Jones, you thank them and walk away. That creates trust—and real collaboration.

"I can ask anybody how they'd handle something, and I can rest assured they're going to give me answers," she said. "It's an amazing difference."

Sitting across from Lili, I was struck by how calm and measured she seemed—despite a life that took her from Nigeria to Paris to London to New York to Basel to Beijing and finally to Chapel Hill.

"I try to be pretty intentional," she said, "as I think through things."

Intentional might be an understatement. This is a woman who moved to Paris on a dare, survived 9/11 by serving others, chose her city with a spreadsheet, and found her calling through a Venn diagram.

And now she helps other people plan their lives with that same clarity.

A financial advisor who actually listens—who asks about your life before talking about hers. Lili Engelhardt is a financial advisor available to discuss your financial goals.

This feature is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice.

Connect with Lili Engelhardt, CEPA^Ⓡ, AAMS^Ⓡ
Financial Advisor with Edward Jones

Business Phone: (919) 246-5763

Email: [email protected]

Website: edwardjones.com