When Sean Carney, ’90, and Mimi Gilligan JD/MBA, ’91, arrived at the Law School in the late 1980s, they came from different places with different ambitions. Carney grew up in Western Canada in a family steeped in education and politics. Gilligan was raised in the Chicago area, in a household where education was central. What they shared—and what has continued through more than three decades of marriage—was a love for intellectual challenge, a sense of broad possibility, and a community that would shape not only their careers, but their lives.

Carney’s path to the Law School was influenced early on by the public officials he encountered growing up, many of whom held law degrees. After earning his undergraduate degree from Harvard College and spending time at Goldman Sachs in New York, he applied to programs in both Canada and the United States, but a visit to Chicago stood out. “I was just really impressed,” he recalled. “I was praying I would get in. I really liked the feel of it.”

For Gilligan, graduate study felt like a natural next step. Her father was an orthopedic surgeon, and her mother returned to school to earn a master’s in psychology while Gilligan was in high school. With an undergraduate degree in economics from Middlebury College, she was drawn to Chicago’s distinctive law-and-economics approach and the opportunity to pursue a joint JD/MBA degree.

As students, both were struck by the seriousness with which their peers and the faculty engaged in ideas, and by the faculty’s dedication. Gilligan remembers first-year Elements taught by Professor David Strauss as foundational. It provided not just legal training, it reshaped her thinking.

“You start to learn how lawyers and judges think,” she said. “Between eggshell plaintiffs and slippery slopes, you see that there isn’t always one right answer, and that perspective really matters.”

For Carney, one of the most formative experiences came through the Mandel Legal Aid Clinic. He worked closely with a woman named Ethel Williams, a tenant in the Robert Taylor Homes, who faced eviction after one of her sons ran into legal trouble. As a single mother with a large family, losing her home would have been devastating. Carney worked with her over several years, and at the time he graduated, she had been able to remain in her apartment.

Carney also fondly recalled a course on European Community Law and a small seminar jointly offered by the Law School and the Social Science Division that examined public policy—what was working and what was not. “It forced you to think across disciplines and outside your own assumptions,” he reflected.

After graduation, both Carney and Gilligan built international careers that drew on their legal education. Carney moved to London to work at Sullivan & Cromwell before transitioning into investment banking and later into roles supporting philanthropy, family offices, and private investment. He is now the chief operating officer of the Household of the Prince and Princess of Wales, a role that combines legal reasoning, financial analysis, and institutional leadership.

Based at Kensington Palace, Carney oversees finances, strategy, and a staff of approximately 80. His appointment in the fall of 2023 was part of a significant restructuring that brought a more modern, corporate approach to the royal household. Working closely with Prince William and Princess Catherine, Carney draws on his legal training and extensive work in finance and family offices to manage one of the most high-profile households in Britain. “It helps to know more than one thing, particularly as you get older,” Carney said. “Law school broadened me more than I realized at the time. I can read a contract carefully, and that still matters more often than people expect.”

Gilligan’s career path began in finance, first with Salomon Brothers, then with Merrill Lynch, including work in corporate finance and on trading floors in New York and London. After taking time away from full-time work when the couple had a young child, her career took a pivot when she joined Atlantic Studios, a London-based documentary production company. For nearly two decades, she has served as director of legal and business affairs, negotiating with broadcasters, streamers, and technology companies and with talent ranging from Sir David Attenborough and Dame Judi Dench to the late Stephen Hawking. The company’s work spans traditional documentaries, IMAX films, and immersive media experiences in virtual and augmented reality.

As their professional paths and personal lives became increasingly rooted in London, their connection to the University of Chicago community there grew, too. When Carney and Gilligan first arrived, alumni gatherings in the city were relatively small, often drawing only a handful of people, many of them from the business school. Those gatherings made a lasting impression.

Over the past 35 years, Carney and Gilligan have helped the UChicago alumni community in London grow into a thriving cross-disciplinary network. Along the way, both have served on the Law School Council and on the Reunion Committee, and Gilligan remains an active Council member.

Their continued involvement—and support—flow naturally from the role the Law School has played in their lives and from their pride in what it has become. “Because the faculty is relatively small, the place is relatively small, not that many things could go wrong, and all of a sudden it wouldn’t be what it was,” Carney reflected. “Somehow or another, it’s managed to get even better than it was when we were there, and that’s impressive. That doesn’t happen by accident.”

For Gilligan, staying connected is about continuity. “There’s an intellectual energy that you don’t find everywhere,” she said. “Maintaining that connection helps sustain it, not just for us, but for future students.”

For both, giving back is about supporting a place that challenged them and broadened their perspectives, and that continues to cultivate the kind of close-knit community that first drew them to Chicago.