Four Women Running Major University Endowments Left Jobs in Recent Months

Four women running major university endowments have left their jobs in the past few months.

The departures include: Sally Staley, CIO for Case Western Reserve University, who retired; Kimberly G. Walker, CIO at Washington University, who will continue to do some consulting to the university, according to an official release; Pamela Peedin, CIO at Dartmouth College, who announced last November that she will leave this June for personal reasons; and Adele Gorrilla, CIO for Denison University, who left to join an unnamed family fund.

This handful of departures, recently reported by Bloomberg, wouldn’t be so noticeable if there were more women in this aspect of the business, but women account for only about 15 percent of top managers for endowments, according to related research.)

These departures aren’t about being female, says Deb Brown, managing director, asset and wealth management recruiting practice at Russell Reynolds Associates. She believes it is more likely that four women are leaving because traditionally tenure in these roles is short. “Forget the gender issue. You can count the number of men who have been in their jobs for years on a hand and a half.

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“I’m just not convinced that this is a trend line. I think the CIO role is terrific for women. It is the kind of role that can be incredibly satisfying with a reasonable work life balance,” she added.

Yet when it comes to the career ladder, women in finance generally make 65 cents for every dollar their male coworkers earn, says Catherine Hill, vice president for research for the American Association of University Women, AAUW.

It is one of the largest pay gaps in any industry, she says, and especially troubling considering that pay in accounting is generally equal between the sexes. “It isn’t about women being able to do the work, it is something about leadership itself – it is associated with masculinity.”

Hill also believes that the current political environment is making things even tougher on women. “We’ve had a change in the political climate and that affects the workplace climate. We’re seeing a willingness to express bias openly, and women are leaving because of the climate that they experience as a result,” she says.

By Jennie L. Phipps

Although a standard of care is already in place for institutions, via the Uniform Prudent Management of Institutional Funds Act (UPMIFA), the coverage of the DOL fiduciary rule and related plan sponsor lawsuits in recent years have brought “renewed awareness” within the industry to improve fiduciary processes, according to Billy Lanter, fiduciary investment adviser at Lexington, Ky.-based Unified Trust Co.

“No institution wants to be a headline, as it relates to litigation, so the rule of a fiduciary is a much hotter topic today among foundations and endowments,” he says.

Institutional clients can uphold the UPMIFA standard of care and build donor trust by removing conflicts of interest, improving fund and asset quality, reducing fees and assessing concentration risk, he adds.

Of course, doing so is a process rather than an overnight fix. “Fiduciary education must be an ongoing commitment to the institutional culture, especially with board and staff turnover,” Lanter says.

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A few best practices include creating an appropriate investment policy statement (IPS) that states the organization’s goals; regularly reviewing and benchmarking all investment fees; and establishing a definition of imprudent assets along with a process to dispose of them.

One of the most common mistakes institutions make in this regard, according to Lanter, is using multiple money managers without an effective or documented process to review investment management decisions.

“Delegating investment management decisions is fairly common, but when using multiple managers, the fiduciary duty of the organization is to ensure that each manager’s strategy is in concert with one another and consistent with the Investment Policy Statement,” he says. “This can be a rigorous process and institutions often don’t have a documented process to monitor this holistic type of review because they are simply unaware of this responsibility and how to manage it.”

He also suggests improving processes for selecting and evaluating an investment manager. It’s not just about fees and performance, but also about whether the manager can adhere to fiduciary best practices and implement and review the IPS.

And in the end, it all comes back to donor trust. “As anyone who has spent time soliciting donations will tell you, trust is at the core of any major gift,” Lanter says. “As a donor, how do I know my gift will be managed in a prudent manner, used to further the mission of the organization and is exposed to reasonable fees?”

By Corie Hengst