Rockefeller University Names Paula Volent New CIO

Paula Volent

Rockefeller University has appointed Paula Volent vice president and chief investment officer to oversee its $2.5 billion endowment.

Volent will join the biomedical research institution this summer from Bowdoin College, where she led the $2 billion endowment for the past two decades. She succeeds Amy Falls, who is leaving the post this spring to manage the endowment at Northwestern University.

“Paula is unquestionably one of the most accomplished investment officers in the country, and we are thrilled that she has agreed to join us in this vital role,” Rockefeller President Richard P. Lifton said in a statement.

Last month, Volent announced that she would be stepping down from her post at Bowdoin College. The endowment chief at the Brunswick, Maine-based liberal arts college reported top-decile growth over the short- and long-term time horizon.

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“I’m sure I speak for my colleagues on the board and in university leadership when I say how thrilled we are to be able to look forward to a continuation of the highest caliber of leadership with Paula Volent at the helm in the university’s investment office,” Bill Ford, chair of Rockefeller’s Board of Trustees, said in a statement.

Volent previously served as research analyst and senior associate at the investment office at Yale University, where she reported to David Swensen.

Prior to her career in investment management, she ran her own business as an art conservator. She also worked at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco, and the New York Historical Society.

She is also a trustee on the boards and investment committees of the National Gallery of Art, the Yale School of Management, The Rockefeller Foundation, the National Women’s History Museum, Girls Who Invest, and MSCI.

Volent earned her business administration master’s degree at Yale School of Management.

The new Rockefeller endowment chief starts Aug. 15.

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Tags: Amy Falls, Bowdoin College, chief investment officers, CIO, Endowments, Financial Endowment, Northwestern University, Paula Volent, Rockefeller University, Yale

The new leadership at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) continues to make environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing one of its top priorities. And now, the commission has launched a new webpage to provide information on ESG-related investing and agency actions.

The SEC said the creation of the webpage was part of an agency-wide approach in response to soaring investor demand for ESG information.

“Our all-of-SEC approach looks at how climate and ESG intersect with our broader regulatory framework to get investors the information they need to plan for their financial future,” Allison Herren Lee, the SEC’s acting chair, said in a statement.

The webpage is the latest of several ESG-related moves the SEC has made so far this year. In early March, when the SEC released its 2021 examination priorities, climate- and ESG-related risks were at the top of the list. The regulator said its Division of Examinations will shift the focus of reviewing firms’ business continuity and disaster recovery plans to determine whether those plans “are accounting for the growing physical and other relevant risks associated with climate change.”

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The SEC “is enhancing its focus on climate and ESG-related risks by examining proxy voting policies and practices to ensure voting aligns with investors’ best interests,” Herren Lee said at the time. “Through these and other efforts, we are integrating climate and ESG considerations into the agency’s broader regulatory framework.”

Also in March, the regulator launched a climate and ESG task force within its Division of Enforcement. The task force will coordinate the use of division resources to mine and assess information in order to identify potential violations, in addition to creating initiatives to identify ESG-related misconduct. The task force will focus on identifying material gaps or misstatements in issuers’ disclosure of climate risks under existing rules. It will also analyze disclosure and compliance issues relating to investment advisers’ and funds’ ESG strategies.

And most recently, the regulator called on the investment community to provide input regarding the adequacy and effectiveness of the SEC’s climate change disclosure rules. The SEC is asking its staff to evaluate disclosure rules with an eye on facilitating the disclosure of “consistent, comparable, and reliable information on climate change.”