Investment Management Operations

David Brenner is the COO of TIFF Investment Management, an OCIO for nonprofit organizations. Stepping into the COO role of an established manager takes a unique set of skills so I turned to David for his insight. We discuss the common challenges of assessing culture, talent, and legacy; and the importance of timing of when to listen and when to take action. We then turn to David’s perspective on h...

Heather Kennedy Miner is the COO at Advent International, one of the largest private equity firms in the US.    I enjoyed sitting down with Heather to talk about her career path beginning with investment banking and then her 20 years at Goldman Sachs evolving into a variety of positions giving her a unique combination of technical and soft skills well suited for the COO role.   We discuss Advent’s...

Kent Collier is the CEO of Octus, the leading voice in data and intelligence for the credit markets. It was exciting to sit down with Kent to hear about his role as an investor and how he saw an opportunity in the market to create something bigger with the way Wall Street accessed critical information. Kent shares his experience on how they expanded from a single product to developing a full produ...

Reena Jashnani-Slusarz is the chief operating officer and General Counsel at Juniper Hill, a multifamily office based in Menlo Park, California. I had fun sitting down with Reena to talk about her non-linear career arc to find herself in a GC and COO role.    This was a wide-ranging conversation touching upon some of the legal and operational complexities of investing in crypto from a VC perspecti...

Letti de Little is the Chief Compliance Officer for Grain Management, a private equity firm that invests in telecom, infrastructure, and wireless spectrum assets.   Today’s LP is focused on finding uncorrelated assets more than ever.  But doing so often requires an understanding of the operational nuances which are different from buying traditional, tradable securities.  I spent some time with Let...

John Fitzpatrick is a Senior Managing Director and Chief Technology Officer of Alternative Asset Management Technology at Blackstone.   These are exciting times in technology with a lot of moving parts so I was excited to sit down with John to get his perspective on where we are today and where we’re going.   John shares his thoughts on the big picture with trends in data acquisition, automation a...

Melissa Dickerson is the Managing Director of Operations and CFO at Genstar Capital,  a private equity firm based in San Francisco and founded in 1988.   In today’s competitive market, a common road map to revenue diversification is product expansion or adding a new office overseas.   This conversation is a case study on having one strategy and one office.   Melissa shares her thoughts on how the...

Scott Farden is the COO of Nonantum Capital Partners, a Boston-based private equity firm that spun out of Charlesbank Capital Partners in 2018.  Launching a first-time private equity fund has a myriad of challenges from leaving your old firm, raising capital, finding talent and activating operations, so I turned to Scott to share his experience.  We also cover topics like proper preparation and co...

We can’t ignore the fact that AI is playing an increasing role in our day-to-day lives. But the question is how do we do it properly?   So I turned to Kathleen to get her insights on bringing AI in house. We cover a range of topics like how to develop an AI policy, how do we identify and assess the growing list of AI service providers. Once selected, how does one perform proper legal and technical...

Rob McGrail is General Counsel and CCO for DUMAC, the management company for Duke University   As one of the world’s leading endowment managers, Rob shares his career evolution from being the first lawyer at DUMAC, how to create strong team dynamics when closing deals and how the operational investment process has evolved over time.    We cover best practices when working with established and emer...

Emi Larson is the COO of UCLA‘s endowment.   Emi shares what it’s like going from an ops role at an emerging market manager to a hedge fund of funds and how it led to a COO role of a well-known university.   We cover how to make that leap from Director of Operations to the COO seat and the key skills needed for that position. We tackle how non-profits keep up with growing business complexity, the...

Eric Wortman is the COO and CCO of Stable, a GP stakes firm with over $4.5B in assets. If you are an emerging manager or thinking about spinning out, this is the episode for you. As people will tell you, building your own firm and team is vastly different than managing a portfolio. We cover the fuzzy topic of what it means to be “institutional”, how to select the right service providers, critical...

Mike Peltier is the COO of VCU Investment Management Company, supporting Virginia Commonwealth University and its related entities in Richmond, Virginia. Virginia Commonwealth University is pioneering what it means to be a public research university while remaining focused on innovation, diversity, and access in the Commonwealth and beyond. Mike shares lessons learned from his audit and tax backgr...

Ron Lanen is a Partner, Chief Administrative Officer, and General Counsel at HighVista Strategies, an alternative asset manager with approximately $11 billion in assets.    Given the uptick in M&A activity, I was interested in getting Ron’s input following their acquisition of abrdn’s US private markets business.       Ron’s background makes him uniquely positioned to share best practices with acq...

This Sponsored Insight features Troy Pospisil, CEO of Ontra, a legaltech firm created for the private markets industry.    It was great sitting down with Troy to talk about the evolution of how legal and compliance workflows are going digital.   We cover his career from management consulting to the investment team at H.I.G. Capital where he saw a glaring need for better solutions with doing deals...

Richey Reneberg is the Global Co-Head of Investor Relations and Marketing at Taconic Capital, a global event driven alternatives manager founded in 1999 by former Goldman Sachs Partners, Frank Brosens and Ken Brody.      Richey’s career path into the industry is atypical so I was excited to share his story.     Prior to joining Taconic in 2000, Richey spent thirteen years competing on the professi...

This Sponsored Insight features Neal Pawar, the COO of Enfusion, a SaaS platform that combines front, middle and back office in a unified trading system.     We cover Neal’s time at some of the world’s top hedge funds and how it informed his decision to build technology for the industry.   We talk about the tradeoffs of working for both big and small firms and how decisions on your tech stack chan...

Kevin Moran is the COO of AlTi Tiedemann Global, a publicly traded multi-family office and alternatives firm with over $72B in assets.   Kevin shares his insights on how AlTi has grown over time creating a UHNW service offering to meet the growing and evolving needs of its clients.   He shares his thoughts on M&A as a function of organic growth, unique investment strategies, and strategic successi...

Dan Ricci is the Head of Information Systems at Prime Buchholz, an independent investment consultant and OCIO founded in 1988.   If you are building or buying software, this is the episode. Dan shares how they built Prime Plus, an investment analytics tool that is used by their investment consultants and their clients.     Dan shares his thoughts on a wide range of topics with regard to fintech. W...

Hal Liebes is the COO of Alger, an investment firm known for its bottom-up fundamental research process that was founded in 1964. Hal joined Alger in 2005 as they were rebuilding the firm after losing 35 of its 55 employees on 9/11. Hal shares how curiosity and knowing how you work is crucial for finding the right type of role for career happiness. We talk about the role of the COO and the myriad...

Jim La Creta is the Chief Technology and Information Officer for Brandeis University. Jim shares a fascinating and different perspective on technology for an investment office and university broadly. We discuss his career path at Brandeis which started at the help desk 21 years ago to the CTO seat. He shares how he partners with the investment committee and the CIO to assess risk with new technolo...

Adam Weinstein is a Managing Director, COO, and CFO of New Mountain Capital, a $50 billion private equity firm focused on middle market buyout, credit, and net lease strategies.   I really enjoyed this conversation because we focused on two critical elements of building investment firms: people and process.   Adam discusses their investment committee governance process that seeks to foster broad i...

Steven Schwab is the GC and CCO for Thoma Bravo, a $142 billion private equity firm that invests in growing software and technology companies.   Prior to joining Thoma Bravo in 2015, Steven practiced law at Winston and Strawn and Katten Munchin.   Steven shares how to make best use of your legal resources. He shares his thoughts on when to bring legal in-house, how to get the most out of your outs...

Nicole Adrien is the Chief Product Officer and Global Head of Client Relations at Oaktree Capital.   If you work directly with clients and prospects, this is the conversation for you.    Nicole discusses her career path beginnings at Goldman Sachs, and how she turned a summer internship during business school into a career at Oaktree.   Working with clients today is all about transparency, speed,...

Taimur Hyat is the Chief Operating Officer for PGIM. PGIM manages over 1.3 trillion in equity, fixed income, real estate, alternatives, and multi-asset solutions. Being a “strategic COO” is the wave of the future, and Taimur provides some great insight on how he does it. He shares his evolution from doing development economic research to consulting at McKinsey before landing in asset management wi...