Ramblings Alumni Spotlight

Lisa '88 and Paul Emrick '88

Lisa ’88 and Paul Emrick ’88 at first had not planned to attend West Chester, but their eventual decision to become Golden Rams set them on the path to a successful marriage and careers. The couple lives in the Allentown, PA, suburbs, where Paul is a Principal at NewEdge Wealth and leads the firm’s Lehigh Valley team. Lisa is a Registered Nurse for Penn State Health St. Joseph Urgent Care.

“I planned to go to a two-year nursing program,” Lisa explains. “But my father wanted me to go to college and get a four-year nursing degree.” With his encouragement, she enrolled at West Chester. Paul started his college career at Penn State, but it wasn’t the right fit.  After taking several business courses at the local community college, he decided to study economics at West Chester.

Although the couple grew up in small towns just 25 miles apart – Lisa in Catasauqua, PA, and Paul in Bangor, PA – they first met at the University. They were married on August 27, 1988, just two months after their graduation. In the Spring of 1986, Paul joined the Army Reserve and subsequently participated in the WCU Army ROTC program.  Upon graduation in 1988 Paul was commissioned and began his tour of active duty and soon after moved to Fort Sill, OK, where Paul completed his Field Artillery Officer training.

Paul later was stationed for three years in Schweinfurt, Germany. The couple lived in an apartment in the home of a German family and Lisa was the nurse on the small Army base. While there, they unexpectedly witnessed an historic event when the Berlin Wall came down in November 1989, reuniting then-Communist East Germany with West Germany. The event signaled the eventual dissolution of the former Soviet Union. “We were there during the whole re-unification of the country,” Paul says. “It was a pretty cool time in history to be in Germany.”

After his discharge, Paul began a financial advisory career. He remembers being asked to list top 100 people who could become clients. As a first-generation college student who grew up in a small town, he recalls, “I had exactly zero of these people.” Undaunted, he persevered, building a successful career that has included leadership positions as a managing partner at an independent investment firm, executive director at both J.P. Morgan Private Bank and Morgan Stanley before returning to his independent roots at NewEdge Wealth.

The Emricks renewed their ties to West Chester when Paul was invited to speak at a ROTC commissioning ceremony and was later asked to serve on the board of trustees of the West Chester University Foundation – a position he held from 2017-2023. He had earlier served on the advisory board of the College of Business and Public Management.

The Emricks’ relationship with West Chester continues. In 2020, when Paul’s team was in the market to hire a client service associate, he reached out to the University’s Twardowski Career Development Center and hired Monica Dougherty ’20, who quickly become an indispensable member of the NewEdge-Lehigh Valley team. The Emricks supported construction of the Business and Public Management Center and more recently pledged support for veterans’ programs.

Although they note that none of their three children attended the University, West Chester is represented in their family by their son Nate’s girlfriend, Lauren Edelman ’21, who works for University Student Housing, LLC, a subsidiary of the WCU Foundation. “It’s another link for us back to the school,” they say.