Meet Gilbert

Gilbert Garcia grew up in a traditional middle-class Latino family in Corpus Christi, Texas. He is a product of public schools, first-generation college, and received his first big break attending Yale University. He has called Houston home since 1990 when he came to join former Mayor Henry Cisneros in building Cisneros Asset Management Company, ultimately becoming its President. He later joined Garcia Hamilton & Associates and is now the Firm’s Managing Partner. Under his leadership, the Firm has grown from $200 million in fixed-income assets under management to over $21 billion (as of March 16, 2023). While developing a successful business, Gilbert and his wife DeeDee always “give back” to the Houston community and have been involved in their church, kids’ sports, and school activities.

Gilbert has been active in public service and giving back to the community for many years in Houston. From 2010 – 2016, Mr. Garcia served as Chairman of the Metropolitan Transit Authority of Harris County. Under his leadership, METRO improved its financial status, experienced strong labor relations, added 15 miles of light rail, redesigned the entire bus network, revamped the procurement process, improved transparency, and received transparency awards. This earned the 2015 APTA Award for Outstanding Public Transportation System Achievement. Gilbert has served on many boards, including pension boards in Houston and Dallas, the Houston Downtown Management District, and now even the Children’s Museum Houston. In 2022, he was the Co-Grand Marshall of the 44th Annual Martin Luther King Jr. parade in Houston, Texas. He has also Co-Chaired the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure and numerous other philanthropic campaigns. During the depths of COVID, he and his firm stepped up significantly. They held many food giveaways for those most in need by purchasing and distributing over 60,000 masks and hundreds of gallons of hand sanitizer.

Gilbert and his family (wife DeeDee, children Andrew, Daniel Thomas, Ben, and JuJu) came together for many of these efforts.

On a national level, Gilbert was a member of the Treasury Advisory Committee on Racial Equity, FACA Committee convening under the U.S. Department of the Treasury to identify, monitor, and review aspects of the domestic economy that have directly and indirectly resulted in unfavorable conditions for Black, Latino, Asian Americans, and other persons of color. He served on two other FACA Committees with the SEC: the Fixed Income Market Structure Advisory Board and the Asset Management Advisory Committee, where he led the Diversity and Inclusion subcommittee.

Serving alongside Chairman Henry Kravis and other investment industry titans, Mr. Garcia is the longest-serving board member of SEO, a non-profit providing summer internships on Wall Street for minority undergraduates. In 1983, SEO accepted him into its Wall Street internship, placing him at Salomon Brothers. He joined the Board of Directors of SEO in 1988 and was awarded SEO’s Alumni Leadership Award in 2015. Gilbert and GH&A are proud to have won numerous awards and have received many industry recognitions. The Firm recently received Pensions & Investments’ Best Places to Work in Money Management for the sixth year (2016-2020, 2022). Other awards recognize his firm’s top investment performance, his leadership, and celebrate his dedication to diversity.

Gilbert and his wife DeeDee have spent countless hours attending their kids’ soccer, track and field events, volleyball games, choir recitals and many school fundraisers (which Gilbert regularly emcees). They also enjoy supporting the arts, regularly attending musicals and concerts, and attending local sporting events for the Astros and Dynamos. The family are pet lovers with three Yorkies Max, Zoe, Lolli.

Meet Gilbert

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