Seattle’s Group Health Foundation has named a new chief investment officer for its recently established Inatai Investment Management Company.
Peng Wang, who has been with the $2 billion foundation since 2019, has been named the CIO, Institutional Investor has learned.
Wang will take over the role roughly nine months after the organization’s founding CIO, Muthu Muthiah, departed to lead Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta’s $6 billion investment office.
Muthiah brought Wang into the fold at Inatai as managing director of investments. Since he departed, Wang has been serving as acting CIO for the organization.
“The CIO role is an opportunity not only to manage but to lead,” Wang said in a statement sent to II. “I am dedicated to growing our capital through investment while continuing to support our high-caliber team and attract diverse talent that has traditionally been underrepresented across the world of investment.” Group Health is expected to announce the news on Tuesday.
Inatai has big plans for its investment office. The organization plans to start offering investment management services to other nonprofits and foundations using a cost-sharing model, according to the announcement. The organization’s web site notes that it will opt out of a profit-driven model.
“Peng has done an exceptional job of instilling our core values into our work and ensuring that equity and racial justice are embedded in our culture and always a factor in our investment strategy,” said Nichole June Maher, GHF president and CEO, in a statement.
Both the organization’s investment team and its board are made up of a majority of women and people of color. Inatai worked with Black-owned Protégé on the CIO search.
Prior to joining Inatai in 2019, Wang was the head of portfolio research for TIAA Endowments. He also previously served as a risk manager for the University of Virginia Investment Management Company and an analyst at Georgetown University’s investment office.
Wang’s research on risk-based asset allocation and liquidity-driven asset allocation has appeared in the Journal of Portfolio Management.
