Teresa "Terry" Rasmussen's love of learning set her on a circuitous career path that ultimately led her to the top job at Thrivent, a financial services company with $162 billion assets under management.
Rasmussen's role makes her a rare female CEO in this industry (although because Thrivent is a nonprofit, she isn't eligible for our Most Powerful Women in Banking list). Rasmussen grew up on a livestock farm in western Minnesota. As a teenager, Rasmussen said her parents were concerned because she didn't appear to have a specific talent. "My older sister was this incredible artist, and my younger brother had the brain of a mechanical engineer and loved farming. I was in the middle and was kind of clueless," she recalled.
One of her father's friends was a dentist, so he told Rasmussen that she should consider becoming a dental hygienist, because she would always have a job and a decent income. Open to parental guidance, Rasmussen enrolled in a two-year dental hygiene program at North Dakota School of Science, expecting to become a dentist. She soon discovered that she wasn't well suited for the job. "I realized that you had to be somewhat of a quasi electrician and plumber to be a dentist, and those were not gifts that I had been given."
Her brother's girlfriend at the time was studying accounting, and after thumbing through her textbooks, Rasmussen decided that this was her new path.
She continued working part-time as a dental hygienist while she attended Minnesota State University Moorhead. She graduated with a degree in accounting in 1981, and promptly entered law school at University of North Dakota School of Law. "My mother was worried I was going to be a professional student," she chuckled. Even in law school, Rasmussen continued to work part-time as a dental hygienist.
Unbeknownst to Rasmussen, the law school was very good at training trial lawyers. Two of her professors were alumni of the Department of Justice, and they encouraged her to apply to the Attorney General's Honors Program, which allows recent law school graduates to work as federal attorneys.
Rasmussen was admitted to the program, moved to Washington, D.C., and worked as a trial attorney in the DOJ's tax division. "I pushed paper out of D.C. and tried cases in Colorado and Wyoming," she said.
Rasmussen had gotten married between her second and third year in law school, and her husband, who is also an attorney, was living in Colorado Springs while she commuted between D.C. and Colorado. The commute was taxing, so Rasmussen and her husband decided they would move either to Denver or Minnesota, depending upon them both getting job offers in the same city. They moved to Minneapolis and Rasmussen joined Oppenheimer Wolff & Donnelly. There, she practiced in the firm's commercial department concentrating in the bankruptcy, workout, UCC and banking areas from July 1986 until May 1989.
Her career took another turn when a relative of hers asked her to become the general counsel of a local bank he owned, Northeast State Bank. While Rasmussen said that she enjoyed the opportunity to learn about banking, she wasn't comfortable being a "big fish in a small pond," so after nine months, she left the bank to work as managing counsel for American Express.
At Amex, Rasmussen said she "did the full circle of legal responsibilities" during her 15-year stint. She started as a bank and trust lawyer, worked next as the general counsel of its tax and business services department and then led the legal support for its institutional investment advisors. Next she moved over to run the legal department for its insurance division, and then led the legal team for mutual funds.
In late 2004, Rasmussen received a call from a former Amex colleague who wanted her to work at Thrivent as its general counsel. "It was a hard decision because I absolutely loved my time at American Express. But really, it went back again to my love of learning. I felt like I needed to learn how different companies operated," she said.
And while Rasmussen understood financial services at a "pretty deep level," the structure of the company was unlike anything she'd encountered during her then decades-long career.
Thrivent is a nonprofit organization that was created by a 2002 merger between two fraternal benefit societies, Lutheran Brotherhood and Aid Association for Lutherans. The fraternal business model is unique to North America. It combines the "member owned" characteristic of a mutual insurance company with the "social mission" characteristic of a faith-based or service organization. All fraternal benefit societies must comply with state and federal regulations, with regard to their financial services, and must be licensed by the insurance department of the state or states in which they operate. Fraternal benefit societies are recognized as not-for-profit organizations by the Internal Revenue Service. There are currently 53 fraternal benefit societies in the U.S. and Canada.
Aid Association for Lutherans was founded in 1902 in Appleton, Wisconsin, when a group of 500 Lutherans contributed $5 each to form a mutual aid association. Three years later, AAL expanded to serve women — 15 years before women were allowed to vote in the U.S. In the late 1950s, AAL started offering annuities to its members.
Lutheran Brotherhood was founded in 1917 in Minneapolis. In 1931, it began offering loans to farms and churches. In 1963, it began offering its members health insurance and in 1970, it became the first fraternal benefit society to introduce mutual funds.
By the late 1990s, AAL and Lutheran Brotherhood offered a suite of financial services including insurance, investments and annuities to its members, who were then still only Lutherans.
When Rasmussen joined Thrivent in March 2005, Bruce Nicholson, the CEO at the time, told her that the organization had a permanent seat on the American Fraternal Alliance board and urged Rasmussen to take the seat. "It's the best thing that I could have done to really understand the power of fraternalism. So I fell in love with the fraternal aspects and could see the potential of all the impact that we can have in communities through our members."
One of its charitable efforts is "Thrivent Action Teams." Members form a team of friends, family members or neighbors to support a specific cause through a fundraiser, educational event or a service activity. Thrivent gives each team $250 in seed money and gives them kits filled with thank-you notes, nametags, stickers and t-shirts that bear the slogan "Live Generously."
"One of our members is a horticulturist with the University of Missouri, and she enlists all her horticultural friends to grow seedlings and then give them to community gardens," Rasmussen said, citing one example of the causes its action teams support. From 2014 through the end of 2022, Thrivent's members have supported 1 million different causes and have raised more than $1 billion for charity.
In 2013, Thrivent members voted to extend membership to all Christians, not just Lutherans. Of its current 2.3 million clients, Rasmussen said that Thrivent "serves people who believe money is a tool and not a goal."
To illustrate, she recounted a story about a couple whose son got admitted to MIT and wanted to pay for his tuition. "Their previous financial advisor was really focused on 'head math,' and he told them 'that's a really dumb idea, you're putting your retirement at risk,' etc. And they weren't happy with that advice so they started shopping around for another financial advisor. And when they sat down with a Thrivent financial advisor, and he heard the story, he said, "Well, let's figure this out.' And they made it happen. And that's heart math."
In 2015, Rasmussen was sitting in the office of then-CEO Brad Hewitt on a Friday afternoon working on a new organizational structure. When it came time to select who should run the life insurance business, Hewitt caught her off guard by suggesting that she do it. "I'm sure I had a look of sheer terror on my face and told him, 'I don't know about this.'" He assured her that it was a sound idea and gave her some time to think it over. She reflected on the suggestion and decided to take the position. "I figured I'd either love it or I won't." She loved it. "It was really rewarding to get deeper into the business and lead our field organization."
Three years later, Hewitt announced that he was retiring, and the board of directors selected Rasmussen as his successor. She took over the CEO role on Nov. 1, 2018.
In addition to its financial advisory service and life insurance offerings, Thrivent also has a $7.7 billion private equity portfolio, and last October, launched its own ETF, the Thrivent Small-Mid Cap ESG ETF with a 0.65% expense ratio and returns beating the S&P Midcap 400 ESG index and the broader Russell 2500 index, according to the nonprofit's 2022 annual report. "We have investors who are particularly interested in investing in funds that support the environment. Our clients want to make sure we're good stewards of the planet," Rasmussen said.
While the majority of its offerings are designed for retail clients, Rasmussen said that Thrivent's investment products are available to institutional clients, which are primarily retirement plan providers like 401(k) administrators, institutional consultants and other insurance companies. It doesn't offer mutual funds and variable portfolio products to institutional clients. However, the nonprofit maintains institutional relationships through its commercial mortgage loan portfolio that includes apartments, warehouses, hotels, industrial and retail properties along with nonprofit relationships like churches, schools, seminaries, camps and other organizations.
Looking ahead, Thrivent is adopting a digital-first approach to attract the younger generation. "Our members told us that their kids and grandkids weren't necessarily going to church, but they wanted to leave Thrivent's legacy of giving back to them." She added, "Thrivent has a long history of transforming to meet our clients' needs — we've done it for more than a century and it's central to our future success."
