Harvard University’s CFO Dan Shore has announced his plan to depart at the end of September, joining a number of notable financial executives to leave the Ivy League institution this year.
Shore has accepted the CFO position for Onshape, a Cambridge-based startup focused on computer-assisted designs and engineering.
“The opportunity to be Harvard’s chief financial officer has been a true honor,” Shore said in a statement. “For me, this is the right opportunity at the right time. I will be forever grateful for the quality and integrity of all my Harvard colleagues, and others throughout the Harvard community, who make this such a unique and remarkable place.”
Shore joined Harvard in 2003 as the director of budgets and financial planning before stepping to the role of CFO in October of 2008, just in time for the financial crisis.
“Through a time of unusual challenge and change in the economics of higher education, including the 2008-09 global financial crisis and its aftermath, Dan has served Harvard with extraordinary incisiveness and an unrelenting devotion to assuring the university’s long-term financial well-being,” President Drew Faust said.
She said Shore had helped improve the university’s “multiyear financial planning and budgeting processes.” He also overhauled the way Harvard addressed revenue and cost restraints and managed liquidity and debt following the blow of the crisis.
According to Harvard’s annual financial reports, the university endowment lost 27% of its value in the 2009 fiscal year, causing a $14 billion drop in net assets. Since the financial crisis, the university has rebounded slowly, most recently recording a budget deficit of $34 million—less than 1% of its revenue—for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2013.
The $32.7 billion endowment returned 11.3% during the same period.
“We are ever mindful of the volatility of global financial markets and the resulting caution we must use in planning for future endowment distributions,” Shore wrote with then-Treasurer James Rothenberg in the 2013 annual financial report. “The combination of these pressures, which impacts substantially more than half of the university’s total revenue, means we must continue to be aggressive and innovative in our financial management strategies.”
Faust said the university would soon launch a search to fill Shore’s position while taking steps to appoint an interim leader following his departure.
Harvard has lost numerous high-ranking financial officers this year, including endowment chief Jane Mendillo who will leave at the end of 2014. University Treasurer James Rothenberg also exited the institution on July 1, along with Lane MacDonald who stepped down from his post as private equity chief this February after serving just three months.
Despite Harvard Management Company’s high salaries, the endowment also portfolio managers Mark McKenna—who was recruited by BlackRock to start an event-driven hedge fund—and Apoorva Koticha this summer.
Prior to his position at Harvard, Shore worked as a consultant at McKinsey & Co. and an attorney at Nutter, McClennen & Fish in Boston. He has an MBA from University of Virginia and a JD from the University of Pennsylvania School of Law. Shore received his bachelor’s degree from Duke University.
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