Capital Allocators – Inside the Institutional Investment Industry

Rahul Moodgal has spent 20 years as a fund raiser across long only strategies, hedge funds, fund of funds, customized solutions, start-ups, and non-profits.  Collectively, Rahul has raised and helped raise $60 billion for firms since 2005.  He started his career in the industry at powerhouse TT International, and later joined The Children's Investment Fund (TCI) where he led the marketing effort t...

Toby Rodes is the Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Kaname Capital, a value- and quality-oriented manager of small-cap Japanese equities. Our conversation covers the case for Japan and why this time is different. We discuss Toby's deep-rooted fascination with Japan, his education in Japanese culture, and his transition to investing on the sell side and at GMO. We turn to the past false starts of...

Mike Maples Jr. is a partner at Floodgate, a pre-seed and seed-stage venture capital firm he co-founded in 2006 with Anne Miuro-Ko. He has been on the Forbes Midas list eight times in the last decade and backed Twitter, Lyft, Twitch, Okta, and many others in their earliest stages. Attempting to understand if he had been lucky or skillful, Mike studied venture winners and created a framework to des...

Dave Breazzano is the head of the Credit Team at Polen Capital, where he oversees $8 billion of the firm's $65 billion in assets. Dave is one of the OGs in high yield, having started in the early 1980s and invested continuously through more than forty years since.   Our conversation covers some history of the high-yield market alongside Dave's involvement in it, the founding of his firm in 1996, P...

Jase Auby is the Chief Investment Officer of the Teacher Retirement System of Texas, where he oversees the $200 billion pension fund that's the fifth largest in the U.S. TRS manages assets that support the retirement security of over two million public education employees in Texas, and has long been known as a thought-leading steward of capital in the pension community, including engagement with e...

My latest book, Private Equity Deals: Lessons in investing, dealmaking, and operations from private equity professionals, arrives next week. This post shares how this book came to be, a glimpse at what's inside, and a rebuttal of common criticisms of private equity. Read Ted's blog  here .

David Eichhorn is the CEO and Head of Investment Strategies at NISA, a $400 billion employee-owned asset manager of risk-controlled fixed income and derivative overlays that is widely respected for its highly collaborative client relationships. The firm is one of the largest derivative overlay managers in the world and the largest U.S. manager of LDI strategies. Our conversation dives into Dave's...

Today's show is quite different from our typical show. It's an edited replay of a conversation from six years ago with Michael  Mervosh , the Executive Director of the Hero's Journey Foundation. Michael created HJF to provide experiential opportunities for human development and transformation based on Joseph Campbell's mythic hero's journey. A few weeks ago, I received a FaceTime call from Michael...

Josh Fenton is the CIO of the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust, an $8 billion pool he began leading earlier this year upon the retirement of Roz Hewsenian, who served as CIO for the prior twelve years. Roz was a past guest on the show, and that conversation is replayed in the feed. Our conversation follows last week's about succession, using the live example of a successful CIO tran...

Roz Hewsenian is the Chief Investment Officer of the $6 billion Helmsley Charitable Trust. Prior to joining Helmsley in 2010, Roz had a storied career in the industry, highlighted by her two decades of work as the consultant to CalPERS while at Wilshire Associates.  Our conversation tracks Roz's career, including lessons from teaching children, the most important rule of management, successful inv...

As the first generation of investment firm founders approaches retirement age, the issue of succession to the next generation is increasingly at hand. We've seen several successful transitions of firms, many that haven't survived their founders, and an entire sub-industry arise to help facilitate generational transfers across GP stakes, public offerings, and structured transactions. With both mana...

Sarah Samuels is the Head of Investment Manager Research at NEPC where she oversees teams across public equities, credit, hedge funds, and private markets for the $1.5 trillion investment advisory juggernaut. Prior to joining NEPC three years ago, Sarah worked at the senior level of both a top notch endowment and a public pension fund. She sought to bring the best of both worlds to her role at NEP...

Todd Simkin is an Associate Director at Susquehanna International Group, a global quantitative trading firm comprised solely of internal capital that is known for its rigorous analytical approach to decision-making. Todd is also the CEO of Susquehanna Re, his latest role in a 27-year tenure at SIG that has spanned trading, strategic initiatives, and trader education. Our conversation covers the hi...

Jeff Assaf is the founder and CIO of ICG Advisors, which oversees $7B in assets for a highly curated group of 80 client families. While Jeff keeps his client names confidential, ICG manages money for a roster of successful athletes, entertainers, and business professionals with a combination of tailored investment solutions and white-glove service, many of whom he has served for decades. Our conve...

Rob Small and Anil Seetharam are Managing Directors and founding members of the Stockbridge team at Berkshire Partners, a $5B concentrated public equity manager that sits inside the $20B private equity firm. Unlike many public equity strategies at private equity firms, Stockbridge works closely and collaboratively with Berkshire's private equity team on its investment research and has attracted an...

Jennifer Prosek is the founder and CEO of Prosek Partners, a leading marketing and communications firm that for 30 years has helped the world's top brands navigate what comes next. In asset management, Prosek's clients oversee $60 trillion and comprise a who's who in private and public markets. Jen is a popular past guest on this show from her first appearance five years ago and second when she sh...

Jennifer Prosek is the founder and CEO of Prosek Partners, a leading international public relations and financial communications consultancy with offices in New York, London, Los Angeles and Connecticut. Prosek Partners ranks among the top 10 independent public relations firms in the U.S., and among the top financial communications consultancies.  The firm has been listed as an Inc. 5000 Fastest G...

Today's show is the second in an ongoing mini-series discussing Training Grounds, organizations that have developed industry leaders. The first episode discussed Carnegie Corporation, where over a dozen years 8 of the 17 investment professionals that came through the doors became CIOs at Carnegie or other institutions. Bain Capital is one of the world's largest private alternative investment firms...

Charles Duhigg is a celebrated writer for The New Yorker and author of bestseller "The Power of Habit." His latest book, "Supercommunicators," describes how to effectively communicate in conversation. Our conversation covers Charles' path to writing business stories and personal books and turn to his latest tour du force. We discuss the science behind connection, three types of conversations, meth...

Ben Hunt is the creator of Epsilon Theory and co-founder of Second Foundation Partners, where he writes and invests through the lens of narratives, or in his words "If a price moves, it is because a human told themselves a story." Before turning to investing twenty years ago, Ben was a tenured political science professor and founder of two technology companies. He has been studying trends using wh...

I've been thinking about what it takes for allocators to lower the fee burden charged by managers on the path to increasing net returns. Read Ted's blog  here .

Yann Robard is the founder of Dawson Partners, a leading global alternative asset manager overseeing $20 billion that provides innovative structured solutions to the private markets. Formed initially as Whitehorse Liquidity Partners and rebranded as Dawson, both names are inspired by Yann's 1,000 km bicycle journey in the Canadian Arctic that led to his becoming a trailblazer in the market. Our co...

Please join us for our first Capital Allocators University for Investor Relations and Business Development Professionals. Learn more and sign up here .

Graham Weaver is the managing partner of Alpine Investors, a $17 billion people-driven private equity firm that invests in software and services businesses. Graham founded Alpine on the belief that exceptional people create exceptional businesses. Alpine's PeopleFirst approach includes hiring, training, and placing an army of CEOs in its portfolio companies. The strategy has led Alpine to be recog...

Mo Haghbin is the Head of Multi-Asset Solutions at Invesco, where he develops and manages asset allocation strategies and portfolio solutions for $88 billion of client assets within the $1.7 trillion juggernaut. Our conversation covers Mo's journey to finance and his path to a leadership role at Invesco. We discuss Invesco's solutions-based approach that canvasses every type of asset pool and stru...