Robert R. Yohanan, founder, managing director and chief executive officer of First Evanston Bancorp Inc./First Bank & Trust, was recently named DePaul University’s Financial Executive of the Year.

Yohanan, a DePaul alumnus, leads a $750 million publicly held bank holding company that provides retail and commercial banking services in the Chicago area, specializing in serving middle-market companies and not-for-profit corporations. He also has served two terms as a director of The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.

Inductees into the Financial Executive Hall of Fame are chosen by the Driehaus College of Business’ Finance Department Advisory Board, and photos of inductees line the wall outside DePaul’s Finance Department in the DePaul Center, located at 1 E. Jackson Blvd., Chicago. Yohanan is the 14th inductee into the Financial Executive Hall of Fame since 1999.               

“Mr. Yohanan is a great addition to our Financial Executive Hall of Fame and a wonderful role model for our students,” said Ali Fatemi, chair of the Finance Department in the Driehaus College of Business. “He personifies success, integrity and honor. His tremendous achievements in the hard-to-navigate environment of banking are a tribute to his unsurpassed standards of moral and ethical conduct.”

To qualify for induction into DePaul’s Financial Executive Hall of Fame, honorees must accumulate a lifetime of distinguished professional achievements, advance to the executive rank within their organization/firm, be or have been directly or indirectly responsible for at least one of the finance functions within their organization/firm, and be recognized for their significant contribution to the success of their organization or to the discipline of finance.

In his acceptance remarks, Yohanan said he was proud to have been selected for the award by the institution that gave him his start. “DePaul not only prepared me well academically, but it helped engender in me the personal qualities of hard work, inquisitiveness, leadership and integrity that are so vital in the business world.”

Prior to starting at First Evanston Bancorp, Yohanan had been president and chief operating officer for six years of Lake Shore Bancorp Inc./Lake Shore National Bank, a $2 billion bank holding company in the greater Chicago area. He also had been employed by the First National Bank of Chicago in a wide variety of domestic and international credit and general management assignments, managing branches in London, England; Dublin, Ireland; Kingston, Jamaica; and Beirut, Lebanon.

Yohanan is a graduate of DePaul Academy and attended DePaul University for one year prior to his appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy. A graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy in 1962, Yohanan spent five years in the U.S. Navy and later received a master’s degree in international relations from the University of Chicago. Yohanan grew up in Chicago and resides in Kenilworth.   

About DePaul’s Driehaus College of Business

Offering a highly respected, practical, flexible program of business study, DePaul’s Driehaus College of Business enrolls 4,249 undergraduate students, and the Kellstadt Graduate School of Business has 2,115 students. DePaul’s undergraduate business program offers a wide range of majors in accountancy and real estate, including top programs in finance, management, marketing, economics, hospitality leadership, entrepreneurship and sales leadership. Graduates benefit from the College of Business’ 50,000-strong alumni network. For more information about the College of Business, visit commerce.depaul.edu. For admission questions, call (312) 362-8300 or email admission@depaul.edu.

About DePaul

With more than 25,000 students, DePaul University is the largest Catholic university in the United States and the largest private, nonprofit university in the Midwest. The university offers approximately 275 graduate and undergraduate programs of study on three Chicago and three suburban campuses. Founded in 1898, DePaul remains committed to providing a quality education through personal attention to students from a wide range of backgrounds. For more information, visit depaul.edu.