Robin Pellish

After 13 years at Barra RogersCasey, Robin Pellish founded Rocaton. In addition to consulting, she has worked as a plan sponsor at Armtek Corporation and also in Corporate Treasury at both PepsiCo and General Motors. 

Rocaton now advises public and private pension plans, endowments, foundations, insurers, and private wealth clients.

According to Pellish, in the 16 years since she founded Rocaton, consulting has changed significantly. “The substance of the work that we do has become enormous,” she tells CIO. “I think the level of complexity that both [consultants] and our clients are dealing with has been the biggest change.” She adds that in some ways, the increasing demands from investors have made for better consultants, who understand investing at a much deeper level than they might have in the past. Technology advancements have helped as well, giving investors the opportunity to bring costs down and improve processes.

“Consulting now isn’t just about investment performance,” she contends. “We provide advice on a whole range of issues—those could be investment-related or they could be operational, for example. We have really developed a partnership with our clients through this evolution. I think over time, the role of the consultant could become more important, precisely because of how many issues we are involved with now.”