Described as “one of the brightest financial and investment minds in Memphis,” Floyd Tyler was an unprecedented force in local economics: the first Black founder of a money management firm here with millions of dollars in government and corporate clients.
At one point, Tyler’s firm, Preserver Partners LLC, was managing more than $230 million in assets and boasting a client roster that included both Memphis and Shelby County government.
“That’s tremendous, especially for a small African American firm in Memphis,” said commercial real estate executive Darrell Cobbins. “In that field, there aren’t many African American firms.”
But Tyler didn’t invest only in stocks, bonds and other funds. He invested some of his profits back into the Memphis community, establishing a foundation at his company “to promote education, economic opportunity and social justice,” according to its website.
“Part of his mission was to use the profits from his success to make Memphis a better city,” said Archie Willis III of ComCap Partners, a real estate consulting firm.
Floyd N. Tyler Jr., 54, died Jan. 23 of cancer. Services were Saturday at Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church. In a testimony to Tyler’s renown, both Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland and Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris spoke at the funeral.
Tyler was born in Chicago but primarily raised by an aunt in Orange Mound. There, “I was driven by the idea that I didn’t want to be poor when I grew up,” he told MLK50, the Memphis-based online news service with an emphasis on stories about social and economic justice.
A graduate of Central High School, Tyler collected degrees at the University of Tennessee at Martin and Carnegie Mellon University before earning a Ph.D. in finance from Florida State University.
Returning to Memphis, Tyler was a partner at the Gerber/Taylor investment firm before striking out on his own as founder, president and chief investment officer with Preserver Partners, where he and his team managed pensions and other funds for foundations, hospitals and other corporate and nonprofit clients. “He was one of the brightest financial and investment minds in Memphis,” said Cobbins.
Always cognizant of his Orange Mound background, Tyler worked to close the racial wealth gap and to increase the financial literacy of Black young people. He was a youth mentor and member of numerous boards dedicated to social service, education and healthy living. A few of these include Lifeblood, the Methodist Healthcare Foundation, Bridges and the Community Redevelopment Agency.
At Preserver Partners, he established a foundation that offered scholarships, hosted financial literacy workshops, made donations to similarly motivated groups and otherwise worked to provide youth with some money-management knowledge and skills they might not receive at home.
“He was really committed to doing what he could within his sphere of influence to make Memphis a better place,” Willis said. “Especially from the standpoint of being being more economic opportunities across the city.”
Tyler leaves a daughter, Rian Tyler; his mother, Aubrey Della Pinion; two sisters, Sadiya Muhammad and Toni Singer; and two brothers, Argentry Dean an Anthony Tyler.
“It’s a huge loss for Memphis,” said Cobbins, “both in terms of his business acumen but also because he was very philanthropic.”
