Evansville icon Lu Porter was born Lula Beatrice Johnson in Jackson, Mississippi. She was the fourth of 12 siblings born to a minister father, and grew up in the role of pulling people together.
Her decades of work in business and on nonprofit boards around Evansville has earned her the nickname “The Connector,” a moniker she’s proud of.
“I connected the dots and connected people and I still do, it it’s my forte,” she said. “I’m really blessed to be able to bring people together and see the smile on their face.”
Porter graduated from Bosse High school. At her first job, she was hired because she had nice handwriting. She soon added more qualifications to her resume at National City Bank, where she started as a clerk and ended up as the assistant vice president less than 18 years later.
“I’m a people person, and I was entwined with everybody from the basement on up,” she said. “I got all the information from them. It’s who you know and how you treat people, so I got to know each department, and when they needed anything, they came to me.”