Lisa Howie.
Courtesy: Smith College
Smith College is hiring the director of Yale’s investments office, Lisa Howie, as its first-ever chief investment officer. Since 2008 she has worked under David Swensen, whom many consider the nation’s top fund manager in higher ed.
“He is the most outstanding endowment manager in the country,” says Deborah Farrington, a 1972 Smith alum who chairs the investment committee of Smith’s board of trustees. “He pioneered large allocations to alternative investments like venture capital and private equity and he had one of the best returns in the entire endowment universe.” As of June 2020, Yale’s endowment totaled $31.2 billion.
At $2 billion, Smith’s is tiny by comparison but it is the second largest among women’s colleges. Wellesley’s is slightly larger, at $2.2 billion.
College endowments are intended to perpetuate a pool of investments that can be used to finance a portion of operating or capital requirements. During the pandemic, they have been a focus of interest since college budgets have strained to maintain empty buildings, pay maintenance staff and cover the costs of moving classes online.
Until Howie’s appointment, Smith has used an outside firm, Investure, to manage its endowment, which has grown from $900 million in 2004. In December, after the endowment topped $2 billion, President Kathleen McCartney announced Smith would “insource” its investing.
Smith relied on an executive search firm, David Barrett Partners, to hunt for its CIO. “We talked to many candidates,” says Farrington. “Lisa rose to the top from the very beginning.” At Yale, Howie’s focus has been international and private equity investing.
According to a Smith spokesperson Howie was driving through Montana today with intermittent cellular service and not available for comment. In Smith’s statement announcing her appointment, Howie is quoted as saying, “This is a fantastic opportunity to build a team and a portfolio in service of Smith’s mission of educating and empowering women.”
Smith prioritized hiring a woman for the job. “We told ourselves that if we did not find an absolutely fantastic person, we were going to search until we did,” says Farrington. Smith was also impressed that Howie has made diversity a focus in her job at Yale. She sourced a diverse group of investment managers and hired a diverse staff. “As the largest women’s college and a college devoted to equity and inclusion, that was important to us,’ says Farrington.
Smith was the subject of unflattering coverage earlier this year for its equity and inclusion efforts. A feature story in the New York Times probed an incident involving a Black student who said she was unfairly targeted by campus security. A law firm hired by Smith later found no evidence of bias. The Times story, Forbes and other media also covered the resignation from Smith by Jodi Shaw, who has raised nearly$300,000 on GoFundMe to support her charge that Smith and other schools have created a hostile environment for white staffers who are required to undergo racial bias training.
“We did get some good press for our new library, designed by Maya Lin,” says Farrington. Smith spent $120 million on the overhaul of the century-old Neilson library on its campus in Northampton, Massachusetts.
