Rockefeller CIO Donna Dean, BlackRock’s Barbara Novick to Receive Inaugural CIO Pioneer Awards

Donna Dean, CIO of the Rockefeller Foundation, and BlackRock Co-Founder Barbara Novick will be honored with the inaugural Chief Investment Officer Pioneer Awards at a dinner on April 15.

Recognizing Dean and Novick’s careers requires no qualification. They are two of the finest, most successful asset management professionals in the industry, full stop. The CIO Pioneer Awards honor one asset owner and one manager who have achieved an even higher hurdle: Reaching the top of their game while also powerfully changing it for the better. 

“There aren’t very many people you hear about over and over again. But Donna Dean and Barbara Novick are certainly two of them.”

Just one in ten senior money managers is a woman, according to the best available data. 

Dean and Novick prove that the glass ceiling can be shattered; young investors of all stripes can get ahead; and while investing may be a (mostly) man’s world right now, investment talent is gender-blind.

“There aren’t very many people you hear about over and over again, from your first days in this industry onwards,” says one soon-to-be member of the 2015 Forty Under Forty. “But Donna Dean and Barbara Novick are certainly two of them.”

Asset management’s lack of progress in diversifying its top echelon’s demands meaningful action. And finally, some appears to be underway. Seema Hingorani, the former CIO of New York City’s retirement systems, is launching a Girls Who Invest initiative to fill the talent pipeline with young women, starting in college and earlier. Major media outlets (following CIO’s lead) are paying attention. And headhunters report that nearly every single search mandate comes with a request for diverse candidates. 

If there is indeed a tide towards change underway, Novick and Dean have had a hand in it.

“Sometimes you have to look at the company you’re with, and quite frankly, if there are no woman in senior roles or on the board, I would look around for a company that does have them,” Elaine Sarsynski, MassMutual’s executive vice president of retirement services, told CIO last June.    

Thanks to Novick, the more than 12,000 employees at BlackRock can look at the c-suite and know that gender won’t factor into their ability to get there.

As CIO of the $3.5 billion Rockefeller Foundation in New York, Dean has held one of the most appealing jobs in institutional asset management for two decades. Her tenure rivals fellow endowment and foundation greats Scott Malpass (27 years at Notre Dame, and counting) and Yale’s David Swensen, whom she also worked under earlier on.

Finally, the inaugural CIO Pioneers have both landed on their respective industry’s highest paid lists, proving that investors can do good while doing well—no matter what one’s gender.

Novick and Dean will receive their awards at a dinner in New York following the 2015 CIO Summit’s opening day, an afternoon event dedicated to the Missing Women of Asset Management. Be there to honor these industry pioneers on April 15th. In doing so, you will help render women like them less of a rarity in the top tier of asset management. 

Barbara Novick, Co-Founder & Vice Chairman, BlackRock

In 1988, Novick departed the mortgage products team at First Boston to co-found a little firm you may have heard of: BlackRock. For the next two decades, the Cornell alumnus (cum laude, naturally) led BlackRock’s global client group as the firm grew into the world’s largest asset manager. That trajectory is largely her handiwork: Novick oversaw global business development across nearly all asset classes. As vice-chairman of BlackRock—a firm with more assets under management than Germany’s annual GDP—Novick now acts as chief diplomat, leading the financial giant’s government relations and public policy efforts. Opening asset management to women and minorities has been another mission of Novick’s, serving on the board of the Robert Toigo Foundation from 2007 to 2010. Last year, the US Treasury included on its asset management reading list her paper “Improving the Financial Ecosystem for All Market Participants”—a title that also happens to sum up the spirit of CIO Pioneers. 

Donna Dean, CIO, Rockefeller Foundation

Top endowments and foundations have their pick of the asset owner talent pool, and it’s telling that two of the very best have hired Donna Dean. She spent seven years at the famed Yale Investment Office, overseeing real estate and the institution’s local community investment program. From there, Dean took her talents to the Rockefeller Foundation, where since 1995 she has aided in the organization’s mission to “promote the well-being of humanity throughout the world.” Before joining the now-$4.2 billion endowment, Dean promoted the financial well-being of retirees as head of trust investments for International Paper Company. The English literature graduate has kept a hand in the retirement asset area, serving as a member of the New York Stock Exchange’s pension advisory committee. Dean set up a call to learn precisely CIO’s expectations in awarding her inaugural Pioneer prize, and ensure she could fulfill them. Thus, proving beyond a doubt why she deserves it in the first place.

Related Content: The Missing Women of Asset Management