Rebuilding the NYU Endowment – Michelle Knudsen (EP.513)
Capital Allocators – Inside the Institutional Investment IndustryShow Notes
Michelle Knudsen is Chief Investment Officer of NYU, where she oversees the university's $8 billion endowment. Michelle joined NYU two years ago, after fourteen years as an allocator at Partners Capital and the Mellon Foundation, with a mandate to build a best-in-class endowment from a clean sheet of paper.
Our conversation traces Michelle's lessons learned working at Goldman Sachs, a growing OCIO, and a foundation that shaped her investment philosophy and views on portfolio construction, risk management, and manager selection. We then turn to the transformation of NYU's investment office from the ground up across governance, portfolio strategy, investment process, and the team. Along the way, we discuss manager selection, emerging managers, venture capital, hedge funds, AI, stress tests, and what it takes to build an enduring investment organization.
Any leader should see for themselves the benefits of elite coaching. Try ALEX: tryalex.admiredleadership.com.
Learn more about our Strategic Investments: OWL.
Learn More Follow Ted on Twitter at @tseides or LinkedIn Subscribe to the mailing list Access Transcript with Premium Membership
Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (https://thepodcastconsultant.com)
More from Capital Allocators – Inside the Institutional Investment Industry
Ben Harrison is President of Industries at Intapp, a leading provider of software solutions to professional and financial services firms. Ben first joined me three years ago to discuss DealCloud, Intapp's platform serving the private capital community. Since then, Intapp has nearly tripled in size, and the rapid development of AI has created an entirely new opportunity for the business.
This Sponsored Insight features Ben Harrison, Founder and Co-President of DealCloud, our sponsor for Season 3 of Private Equity Deals.
My guest on today's show is Tracy Britt Cool, co-founder of Kanbrick, a long-term investment partnership that provides owners of family-owned, midsized businesses with a differentiated option from traditional private equity.
Our next guest on the Senior Decision Makers series is Erlina Yeo Terwelp, a Managing Director at Columbia Investment Management Company, where she oversees the endowment's private markets portfolio.
Charlie Rose is the Global Head of Real Estate Credit at Invesco, where he oversees an $85 billion global platform. Before joining Invesco, Charlie worked in real estate as an academic researcher, jack-of-all-trades through the financial crisis, and investor up and down the capital stack for eight years at Canyon Partners.