Andrew Golden, president and CIO of the Princeton University Investment Co., which manages Princeton’s $35.8 billion endowment, will retire next year after nearly 30 years with the firm, the university announced Friday. The university has hired David Barrett Partners to find a successor.
“My time here has been an incredible privilege,” Golden said in a release. “It’s been almost a three-decade marathon. My goal for the year ahead is to sprint through the tape and to make sure that Princeton is positioned for success over the next 25 years.”
Golden, who joined PRINCO in 1995 from Duke University Management Co., will step down on June 30, 2024. Under Golden’s tenure, Princeton’s endowment has grown tenfold with an annualized return of 12.6%, according to PRINCO. According to the 2022 NACUBO-TIAA Study of Endowments, endowments over the past 25 years have consistently recorded a return rate lower “than the generally accepted target return of 7.5 percent.”
“Andy Golden’s achievements are the stuff of legend,” Princeton University President Christopher Eisgruber said in a release. “His brilliant leadership of PRINCO has changed the economic model of this university, enabling us to support financial aid, graduate stipends, research excellence, and the teaching mission in ways that would otherwise have been unimaginable.”
According to PRINCO, in recent years it has increased the number of firms owned primarily by women and people of color that help manage the university’s endowment. PRINCO cited a report by the Knight Foundation that found approximately 27% of the Princeton endowment is managed by diverse-owned firms. The university also announced that in the past four years, 80% of the firms PRINCO has hired have diverse leadership, as Golden believes finding untapped pools of talent has been a big reason for the endowment’s robust returns.
Golden also attributed his success to taking the risks needed to increase the endowment’s returns. As of the end of fiscal 2022, nearly one-third of the portfolio’s asset allocation was in private equity, while just 6% was allocated to fixed-income investments and cash.
“When you really think about the endowment’s mission, which is to provide into perpetuity an inflation-adjusted level of support, then that redefines risk,” Golden said in the release. “Playing it safe, the way a retiree might play it safe, actually guarantees failure. So we’ve had to be aggressive.”
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