Kristof Gleich is the CEO of Harbor Capital Advisors, a $70B multi-manager platform headquartered in Chicago that partners exclusively with external fund managers to build and distribute actively managed strategies – a model the firm has operated since 1986.

Gleich joined Harbor in 2018 after nearly two decades at Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan, where he ran a 60-person global manager research team overseeing $500B in assets for the International Private Bank. His mandate was to convert a legacy mutual fund shop into an active ETF leader – translating what he describes as "potential energy into kinetic energy."

Since 2021, Harbor has launched 30+ active ETFs and grown ETF AUM from zero to $5B, anchored by long-standing partnerships like Jennison Associates (52-year relationship) alongside emerging managers like BlueCove (systematic fixed income out of London) and Quantix (commodities, founded by a former Goldman partner). The commodities ETF, HGER, surpassed $1B by rethinking index construction from first principles – building inflation sensitivity, backwardation capture, and debasement hedging into the methodology rather than tracking legacy benchmarks like BCOM.

Gleich is bullish on gold and commodities as structural portfolio holdings, arguing that record global debt, fiscal deficits in expanding economies, deglobalization, and central bank reserve diversification make the standard 60/40 allocation obsolete – advocating 10–20% alternatives exposure with commodities playing a central role. 2024 marked an inflection year with $4B in net inflows, and Gleich sees Harbor approaching the "superscaling" phase while emphasizing the cultural imperative to keep disrupting before competitors do it for you.

Learn more about Kristof and Harbor Capital below:

linkedin.com/in/kristof-gleich/

harborcapital.com