Veteran CIO Amy Falls Has a Plan for the $12 Billion Northwestern Endowment

当长期养老院将麦克莱恩将在18年后留下西北大学作为CIO，他创造了一个罕见的工作机会：有机会在着名的学术机构领导120亿美元的投资组合。之后竞争搜索, Rockefeller University CIO艾米瀑布was chosen as the Chicago-area university’s next investment leader. In an interview with亚博赞助欧冠倾向于倾向于倾向于，瀑布分享了在大流行中招募高级地位的东西 - 以及她在5月接管投资办公室的计划。

Institutional Investor:What drew you to Northwestern?

艾米瀑布：为伟大大学服务的机会是令人兴奋的，西北部真正在所有气瓶上移动。这是研究方面，本科课程和音乐学校。所以，它是我深深附加的国家的卓越中心和一部分。我在芝加哥长大，我很高兴回到芝加哥地区。

我也是，坦率地说，有机会再次与学生合作和本科生非常感兴趣。当我在安越的时候，我教会了，我期待着在西北部做一些教学。洛克菲勒是一个美妙，令人惊叹的地方，但它非常致力于科学和博士和研究生，因此真的不是本科界。所以对我来说，与学生互动的机会非常令人兴奋。

西北像许多大学一样，令人难以置信的工作，到达一个更广泛的学生，捐赠资源对此至关重要。我觉得西北人确实利用禀赋，可以从捐赠者中受益。所以，我很高兴能够加入这样一个强大的组织，因为它继续扩大其使命。

II:What do you plan or aspire to bring to the endowment that it hasn’t had before?

Falls: This is a very well-established office and my predecessor had an 18-year track record and a very mature, experienced team. It’s important to work well with what is already a very established and good organization. I just want to build on that strength. I’m a believer in concentrating your portfolio, which is obviously a different exercise at $12 billion than at $2 billion. But I’m looking forward to working with the team to make sure that we’re really, with our highest conviction managers, putting sufficient resources in their hands so that they can really have an impact on performance.

我认为有趣的新领域在投资景观中开放，大流行加速了一些这些地区。因此，我[计划]继续发展投资组合，特别是在风险投资等领域，在那里，解决问题的技术能力可能会从社交媒体和通信技术迁移到其他类型的技术。

II:In VC specifically, I have heard from CIOs that it can be so hard to get into the highest performing VC firms. How will you handle the access problem with venture capital?

Falls: When I started at Rockefeller, we didn’t have that much of a venture program, and that was sort of the same story. Our venture program, I don’t even want to tell you how good the returns were last year and even for this calendar year. But I think the key is not necessarily to try to get access to funds that are already heavily invested, because that’s almost like a zero sum game. If you can get the access, then you’re probably pushing someone else out, or [the fund is] going to outgrow what is a healthy asset size.

我们在洛克菲勒找到了什么，是有新的资金和技术正在解决问题的新领域。现在每个人都谈论的基金是出现的。当我加入洛克菲勒时，他们仍然不是家喻户晓的名字。我们碰巧有投资，我们建立在这项投资，他们是现象。他们是我们投资组合中的顶级表演者之一，还有其他基金，就像我们最近支持645个企业，这是一个美妙的年轻人[由]两个非洲裔美国人。但我也认为遵循创新是很重要的。

例如，可以有生物技术领域，西北等地方可能有很大的洞察力，因为他们正在进行很多重要的研究，我们可能会在一些新的参赛者领先。在某些方面，冒险是关于智力资本。如果我们考虑技术在哪里真正解决问题，那么有一些重要的问题，特别是气候，而且涉及疾病。

对我来说重要的是赶上公共汽车。过去十年的一个强大的公共汽车既是艰难的，也不一定是最好的时间，但我认为总有年轻人来了，他们是可被发现的。有时候它有点危险，但试图保持开放的心态很重要。你必须谨慎而不是急于这些计划;任何私人资本计划应慢慢仔细。西北有一个良好的投资计划，但我认为未来看起来与过去不同。关键是试图找到有新的和令人兴奋的人在哪里。

即使在对冲基金空间，我认为同样的事情也有点真正。一些传说现在也许不是你想去的地方，但是有新公司即将到来。因此，访问始终是一个问题。这更艰难，但也有新的机会，因此只需保持开放态度就很重要。

II:What about the team? There’s often some anxiety, regardless of industry, when a new boss arrives, and a great part of starting a new job can often be building a team. When you took over at Rockefeller University, you sort of started with a clean slate. How will you approach building or keeping or developing a team?

瀑布：我认为这是一个非常好的，成熟的团队。当然，这是早期。我期待着与这支球队合作，并在他们的专业知识上建立。洛克菲勒大学更小，营业额得多。这是一个有一些营业额的组织，但是也有很多稳定性，所以我认为保存这一点并建立在那里的力量很重要。我很兴奋这个团队。这是非常大学的。

关于通用模型或部门专家模型有很多争论，我认为你必须有一点点。我真的喜欢每个人都在哪里考虑所有投资，即使你有专业化的要素。否则，您可以绑在盒子上，然后很难跨框分配资本。

II:您是否可以从想要加入你的人才开放，或者应该握住马匹？

Falls: At this stage, I think we’ve got a lot of team to work with and I would see working with the team we have for the foreseeable future. I’m quite interested in developing an active analyst program — that’s been really fun and exciting at Rockefeller.

我们很小，所以我们每年有一个分析师，但我认为这对商学院前的年轻人来说是一个很好的方式，以便获得资产管理行业的广泛接触。我发现了很棒的年轻人，我想象在大学校园里，你甚至可能有更好的流动。我认为这也是一个重要的方式，可能是鼓励可能不会以其他方式考虑资产管理行业的年轻人。我觉得在一定程度上复制了大卫斯文文的前景令人兴奋，试图教导和发展一些可能会吸引人们对资产管理行业的本科课程，然后让一些人通过办公室。

即使在洛克菲勒，两个高级人民实际上也是分析师。就在十年中，我在那里，我们有，我不知道，像20个分析师和其中几个人一样留下来。

II:If we can just talk about some of the logistics of how you got a job at this level and taking over a team when travel and in-person meetings are so difficult. Did you ever interview in-person for the job or was it all over the internet?

Falls: I did, I did. This was Chicago, I just want to remind you. It was winter and I had a couple of interviews outside. One there was a heater; one we were walking fast and I wish I had had a hat, but I didn’t. So I did do a little bit of in-person interviewing, particularly with the CFO and the chair of the investment committee, where those relationships are so important. Much was on Zoom. Zoom, we’ve all gotten better at, but I am very anxious to get out there in-person and be in a face-to-face setting as soon as it’s safe to do so.

我不会让任何人在减去10度天气中走动 - 我没有;这是十一月或十二月，所以这并不是那么冷。但随着春天来的，我们越早可以在一起，更好。With my team at Rockefeller, we’re doing the job as well as we can, but I don’t feel that the ancillary thinking — which I think is often the most important kind of thinking — is so easy when you have an hour and a half Zoom. It’s kind of like the difference between buying a book on Amazon and going to a great bookstore. You can get it done, but you’re not going to see that other thing out of the corner of your eye.

So I really miss being in-person, and hopefully, God-willing we’ll all be back in places where we can be together going forward. As much as I appreciate Zoom and the technology, I think it’s important to build relationships.

II:你的丈夫[汉密尔顿里董事长Hartley Rogers]是如何成为婚姻中最不成功的人？

Falls: [laughing] He’s very humble about it. People keep saying, “Really? He’s going to move to Chicago?” Yeah, he is. Who you marry, it’s really important. It’s one thing to have a husband who says, “I would never stand in your way.” It’s another to have a partner who truly supports you. In life, sometimes one person has the opportunity, sometimes the other one does. It’s really lucky when you can count on your partner to be like, “Okay, fun. Fun, new adventure, let’s go.”