Capital Allocators – Inside the Institutional Investment Industry

Our next guest on the Senior Decision Makers series is Luis Laboy, Director of Public Equity at the Hewlett Foundation, where he's spent the last decade running the public equity book alongside CIO Ana Marshall — a mentor and colleague he first met nearly thirty years ago. The foundation's assets stand at roughly $14 billion today.

Luis spent fifteen years as a direct emerging markets investor at Everest Capital before crossing to the LP side, and our conversation digs into how he's leveraged that experience as an allocator. We discuss how the cadence and depth of decision-making changed when he went from a high-turnover book at Everest to a handful of high-conviction relationships at Hewlett, how his time split between portfolio construction and manager selection has evolved over, and how his time marketing the fund shaped the way he interviews managers and thinks about turnover.

Luis is incredibly insightful about how his early interests and upbringing have shone through across his career. He thinks and speaks in analogies, he's wildly entertaining, and — in short — he's just a genuinely good dude, and that comes through in spades in our conversation.

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Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (⁠https://thepodcastconsultant.com⁠)

Frank Danieli is Head of Global Credit Solutions at MA Financial Group, an ASX-listed alternative asset manager that oversees A$15 billion ($10 billion) across a broad range of private credit and lending strategies and A$179 billion ($125 billion) in a lending ecosystem platform. Frank began his career in restructurings, the self-described 'dark side of credit', and has used the lessons from special situations and distressed loans to build a performing credit platform across asset backed finance, direct asset lending and corporate private credit.

Our conversation discusses what global investors can learn from the model of private credit in Australia. We explore the evolution of private credit in Australia and why it developed differently from the sponsor-backed lending market in the U.S., the regulatory shift that pushed lending off bank balance sheets, the role of Australia's pension system, and MA Financial's strategy for building proprietary origination across the lending ecosystem.

We then turn to MA Financial's investment process, including the separation of investment selection from portfolio management, red teams, war games, and rigorous stress testing. Along the way, Frank shares why sourcing - not fundraising - will define long-term winners, why private credit requires diversified balance sheets, and why portfolio management and risk management are the largest sources of alpha in the asset class.

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Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (⁠https://thepodcastconsultant.com⁠)

Baroness Dambisa Moyo is a global economist, author, board member, and investor who sits at the intersection of public policy, corporate governance, and capital allocation. Dambisa serves in the U.K. House of Lords, sits on the boards of Chevron, Starbucks, Condé Nast, and Oxford University's investment committee, is Chair of the Economic Club of New York, and oversees Altered Trajectory alongside her husband, Jared Smith, the family office formed after his sale of Qualtrics in 2018.

Our conversation traces Dambisa's journey from growing up in Zambia to becoming a leading voice on global economic development and governance. We discuss how her experiences across more than 80 countries and on the boards of four global companies shaped her judgment on economic growth, governance, and decision-making.

We then turn to the application of those lessons at Altered Trajectory, including the evolution away from an endowment-style portfolio, balancing Dambisa's macro convictions with Jared's moonshot investing style, and positioning for long-term themes. Along the way, we discuss the challenge of investing through structural change while avoiding ideological thinking. Any leader should see for themselves the benefits of elite coaching. Try ALEX: tryalex.admiredleadership.com.

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Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (⁠https://thepodcastconsultant.com⁠)

This WTT, 5.5 Lessons at 55.5 reflects on what five-and-a-half decades of investing, podcasting, and mistakes have taught me about people, markets, and myself.

Read Ted's blog here.

Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (⁠https://thepodcastconsultant.com⁠)

Pat Dorsey is the Founder of Dorsey Asset Management, a $1.7 billion global public equity manager focused on companies with competitive advantages and long investment runways. Pat created Morningstar's moat research framework and led its equity research efforts for a dozen years before launching his firm in 2014.

Our conversation covers the nuances of investing in businesses with wide moats across quantitative analysis, switching costs, network effects, brands, management, alignment, capital allocation, and reinvestment runways. We then turn to Pat's application of moat analysis to his investing, including concentration, global scope, position sizing, decision making, and lessons learned.

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Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (⁠https://thepodcastconsultant.com⁠)

Our first guest on the Senior Decision Makers mini-series is Nick Csicsko. Nick is a Managing Director at the Trinity Wall Street endowment, where he joined CIO Meredith Jenkins at the founding of the investment office in 2016 and has spent the last decade helping build a young endowment inside a 320-year-old institution. Today the endowment has grown to over $6 billion.

Nick's path into investing is a fascinating one. He studied composition and earned his Doctorate of Music at Juilliard. While there, he talked his way into an internship at Juilliard's endowment and never looked back.

Our conversation covers the lessons he carried from music into investing, his investment philosophy, and the details of his process. Manager selection sits at the heart of his work, and he articulates what separates the relationships that endure from the ones that don't. Nick is a remarkable storyteller and shares a number of real-life examples of manager relationships — some that worked out well, some that didn't, and others with insights for allocators and managers alike.

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Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (⁠https://thepodcastconsultant.com⁠)

Abigail Wattley is the Chief Investment Officer of Williams College, where she oversees the school's $4.5 billion endowment. She became CIO three years ago upon the retirement of Collette Chilton, whose past conversation is replayed in the feed. Abigail has spent two decades in the Williams investment office, and her tenure manifests the benefits of duration and institutional knowledge in the seat.

Our conversation traces Abigail's nearly twenty-year journey inside the Williams Investment Office, from joining as an early analyst to becoming the internal successor CIO. We discuss the consistent mandate throughout alongside Abigail's evolution from analyst to deputy to decision-maker, including the knowledge retained as an internal candidate, the tension between respecting an institution's history and putting her own stamp on the portfolio, and perspectives on hedge funds, private markets, liquidity management, real assets, team development, and AI.

Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (⁠https://thepodcastconsultant.com⁠)

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Collette Chilton is the CIO of Williams College where she has overseen its $3 billion since 2006. Collette is nothing short of a legend in the business. She has sat in a CIO seat since the early 1990s at the helm of public pension MassPrim and corporate pension Lucent before joining Williams. Institutional Investors bestowed its Lifetime Achievement Award on Collette in 2019, and Barron's named her one of the 100 Most Influential Women in Finance in 2020. Our conversation covers Collette's career path and lessons learned before joining Williams. We then turn to her arrival at Williams in 2006 to a phone, a computer, and a legacy portfolio, Williams' governance structure leveraging alumni advisors, asset allocation, manager selection, manager monitoring, hedge funds, venture capital, and navigating around popular managers. Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (⁠https://thepodcastconsultant.com⁠)

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This WTT, AI: Fundamentals, Valuation, and the Next Allocator Dilemma takes on a high-level assessment of AI companies as late-stage private winners prepare to go public, and the next big challenge allocators face as a result. Read Ted's blog here.

Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (⁠https://thepodcastconsultant.com⁠)

Jonathan Wang is the founder and CEO of EOS Investors, where he has built three real estate investment platforms totaling $2 billion in assets under management across the hotel and residential sectors. Jonathan also created a wholly owned hotel management company that oversees 60 properties for the EOS funds and five core partners.

Our conversation covers Jonathan's path to hotel investing and EOS' hotel investment process across market selection, property type, underwriting, vertically integrated operations, and managing through cycles. We also discuss extensions into residential real estate, hotel credit, and opportunities and risks going forward.

Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (⁠https://thepodcastconsultant.com⁠)

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